A viral image shared on Facebook purports to show 2024 Republican nominee and former President Donald Trump posing for a photo with a group of black female supporters.

Verdict: False

The claim is false. The image has been generated with artificial intelligence (AI). A media forensics and AI expert denied the image’s authenticity in an email to Check Your Fact.

Fact Check:

Trump said he “could not be more thrilled” that Vice President Kamala Harris has chosen Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz to be her 2024 running mate, according to The Hill. Trump made the comment during a recent interview on the Fox News show, “Fox and Friends,” the outlet reported.

The Facebook image, which has garnered 7,000 likes as of writing, purports to show Trump posing for a photo with a group of black female supporters. The image, originally shared on X, the social media platform previously called Twitter, bears the following caption: “They are afraid of black women supporting Trump because when we do, we drop the hoodrat act, and the left hates classy women!.”

The claim is false as the image is AI-generated. An August 3 X post shared by another social media user features four photos showing close-up details of the original image. In all four photos, Trump and the women he’s purportedly posing with have extra, missing, or deformed fingers, a hallmark of AI-generated images, according to BuzzFeed News.

Likewise, a content detection scan using the website “Hive Moderation” indicates the image is only 73.3% likely to have been generated with AI, citing Stable Diffusion as the program that was probably chosen to create the image. However, it is important to note that AI detectors can be tricked if grain or texture is added to a photo, thus decreasing the detector’s ability to correctly recognize the photo as being AI-generated.

Screenshot captured via Hive Moderation

In addition, Check Your Fact did not find the photo referenced in any recent credible news reports about Trump. Actually, the opposite is true. On August 7, USA Today reported the image was AI-generated. The outlet contacted Sharika Soal, the social media user who originally shared the image on X. Soal confirmed she made the image in an email to the outlet.

“I am a Black woman and my intention was to show people an ILLUSTRATION of modestly dressed, classy Black women supporting Trump. People lost their minds and are now pretending I didn’t make the photo and that they can’t discern by simply looking at the photo to see it is aII digital art or simply scroll my page and see that I am an AI digital creator,” Soal told USA Today.

Furthermore, Trump has not publicly commented on the image. (RELATED: Donald Trump Claims Kamala Harris Never Passed Her Bar Exam)

Dr. Walter Scheirer, a media forensics and AI expert at the University of Notre Dame, denied the image’s authenticity in an email to Check Your Fact.

“This image is very likely the product of a generative AI algorithm. It is poorly rendered and looks highly unnatural. For instance, the woman to the right of Trump has six fingers on her hand,” Scheirer said.