AI behind the picture of police arresting Trump

The claim: The picture shows the police arresting Trump

An Instagram post from May 30 (direct link, archive link) apparently shows the arrest of former President Donald Trump by a group of police officers.

“Guilty!” is the caption.

The post received more than 9,000 likes in less than a day.

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The image was created using artificial intelligence and an online recognition tool, according to experts. Trump was not taken into police custody after his conviction on May 30. He remains free until the verdict is announced on July 11.

Trump image “clearly the product of artificial intelligence”

Trump, the likely Republican presidential nominee, became the first former U.S. president to be convicted of a crime when a New York jury found him guilty on all 34 counts of falsifying business records to conceal a hush-money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election. He faces up to four years in prison when he is sentenced in July.

However, he was not taken into police custody. The image in the Instagram post is an AI-generated fake, according to two experts and an online AI detector.

Fact check: Photos showing Trump’s arrest by police are computer generated

“It’s clearly the product of artificial intelligence,” Walter Scheirer, an engineering professor at Notre Dame whose research includes image recognition, told USA TODAY.

VS Subrahmanian, a computer science professor at Northwestern University and AI expert, agreed that the image is likely a fake.

The online detection tool Hive Moderation reported a 99.9% probability that the error was generated by AI.

The image gives a misleading impression of the events that unfolded in and around the Manhattan courtroom. Rather than being arrested by police, the former president left the courtroom on his own. He spoke briefly to the media before driving away in an SUV. He spoke at a press conference the following day and is scheduled to debate President Joe Biden in Atlanta on June 27. That would not have been possible had he been taken into custody by authorities.

There is also a small detail wrong in the photo: the color of his tie. Trump wore a solid blue tie in court that day, not the one with blue and white stripes that can be seen in the fake photo.

Other details of the picture also indicate that it is a fake.

The police officer to Trump’s right is wearing two badges. The police officer behind him is wearing a deformed badge on his cap. And the hands in Trump’s armpits cannot be clearly linked to the police officers in the picture.

“The overall image is not photorealistic,” said Scheirer. “It looks more like a cartoon, which is often seen in the output of generative AI models.”

Fake images of Trump have regularly caused confusion on social media. USA TODAY has previously debunked claims that images show Trump at a barbecue surrounded by black supporters, leading a crowd down a flag-lined street and sitting on a plane with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. These images were all created using artificial intelligence.

USA TODAY contacted the Instagram user who shared the post but did not immediately receive a response.

PolitiFact has also refuted this claim.

Our fact-checking sources:

Walter Scheirer, May 31, email exchange with USA TODAY
VS Subrahmanian, May 31, email exchange with USA TODAY
Hive Moderation (Internet Archive), May 31, detection results
CNBC (YouTube), May 30, President Trump after guilty verdict: “This is far from over”
ABC News (YouTube), May 30, Donald Trump leaves courthouse after guilty verdict
USA TODAY, May 31, Donald Trump found guilty in New York criminal trial: Headlines across America

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