Thousands of social media accounts shared an image of a man with long gray hair and a beard, wearing sunglasses and flanked by two men.
Their guess about who it is? Disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, who died in 2019.
“Israel faked his death,” read one Feb. 5 X post with 5 million views. “Epstein is still alive and walking the streets of Tel Aviv.”
“Someone who looks like Jeffrey Epstein was JUST SPOTTED walking in Tel Aviv, Israel,” read another Feb. 5 X post with 5.5 million views. “Could this really be him? It’s literally him.”
This image also circulated on Facebook, TikTok, Instagram and Threads.
This doesn’t prove Epstein is alive. The image was generated with artificial intelligence.
(Screenshot from X)
Many of the posts shared a cropped version of the image, but the original shows the logo of Gemini, Google’s AI chatbot. A reverse image search showed the image was posted Feb. 1 to a Reddit forum titled “hardaiimages.” The forum’s “About” page invites users to “post your funny, hard AI images here.”
The Reddit user who posted it confirmed in a comment it was made with Gemini. “You can see the Gemini logo at the bottom right of each picture. I didn’t think it would become so viral,” the Feb. 6 comment read.
Other details in the image show it’s fake. The road signs in the background show Hebrew text and its English translation, but the translation is inaccurate. The signs also don’t match a real place in Tel Aviv; a street named “Haangus Ev.” does not show up in Google Maps.
(Image from Reddit; red rectangle shows nonsensical road signs, red circle shows Gemini logo)
This image doesn’t show Epstein, alive, in Tel Aviv. We rate this claim Pants on Fire!
PolitiFact Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.
