Image posted by Elon Musk of Kamala Harris wearing communist garb is AI-generated

No older versions of the image can be found of the image posted by Musk

Sep 04, 2024

CLAIM

Elon Musk, owner of social media platform X, posted an image on his account of U.S. Vice President Kamal Harris wearing a red uniform with Communist insignia on it saying “Can you believe she wears that outfit?”

BACKGROUND

X owner Elon Musk, who has nearly 200 million followers on the platform, posted an image on his account on Monday, September 2, showing U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris wearing a red uniform with the Communist hammer and sickle symbol on it.

Musk posted the image with the caption “Kamala vows to be a communist dictator on day one. Can you believe she wears that outfit?” At the time of writing, the post had amassed 78 million views and had been reposted almost 60,000 times.

The photo was posted as a reply to a post by Harris showing a picture of former president and current Republican candidate for president Donald Trump with a text reading: “Donald Trump vows to be a dictator on day one.” In the caption to the post, Harris said: “We won’t let him.”

The post by Harris appeared to refer to statements made by Trump on conservative TV station Fox News saying that he would “be a dictator for one day” and “on day one” should he win November’s election.

The Harris campaign has previously posted videos of Trump making those statements as can be seen here and here.

Musk publicly endorsed Trump after the July 13 assassination attempt on the former president who has on numerous occasions attacked Harris for being a communist, despite there being no examples of her ever supporting the ideology.

METHOD

A reverse image search on Google of the photo depicting Harris in the uniform yielded only results that were either comments on the picture, reposts or news articles about it.

A search using TinYye, an image search tool, yielded no results after a scan of 70 billion images.

We then to turned to AI detection site isitai.com which said that the image was “highly likely” AI-generated and that it was probably generated using Midjourney.

RATING

Based on the fact that no older versions of the image can be found, and that an AI detection analysis says there is an 81% probability of the image being digitally created, the verdict is that it was indeed generated using AI.

SOURCES

X (formerly Twitter). (2024). Available at: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1830656672211103825 [Accessed 4 Sep. 2024].

‌X (formerly Twitter). (2024). Available at: https://x.com/KamalaHarris/status/1830336346310754456 [Accessed 4 Sep. 2024].

X (formerly Twitter). (2024). Available at: https://x.com/KamalaHQ/status/1732224914189672627 [Accessed 4 Sep. 2024].

X (formerly Twitter). (2024). Available at: https://x.com/KamalaHQ/status/1745269318466592903 [Accessed 4 Sep. 2024].

X (formerly Twitter). (2024). Available at: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1812256998588662068 [Accessed 4 Sep. 2024].

McManus, D. (2024). Column: Trump calls Harris a Marxist. Why his wild punches don’t land. [online] Los Angeles Times. Available at: https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2024-09-02/presidential-election-donald-trump-calls-kamala-harris-a-marxist-a-communist-even-a-fascist-why-his-wild-punches-arent-landing [Accessed 4 Sep. 2024].

‌Tineye.com. (2024). TinEye Reverse Image Search. [online] Available at: https://tineye.com/search/b090358dd403c7e144e80766621d3af372b0f2b2?sort=score&order=desc&page=1 [Accessed 4 Sep. 2024].

Is It AI? (2024). – Is It AI? [online] Available at: https://isitai.com/ai-image-detector/ [Accessed 4 Sep. 2024].