As artificial intelligence proliferates into our world, it’s getting more and more difficult to tell what is fake from what is real. And apparently, that was certainly the truth this week when a bizarre image appearing to link Donald Trump and Michael Jordan began to circulate on social media.
According to Shayan Sardarizadeh of the BBC, who works to combat disinformation on social media and elsewhere on the Internet, a photo that has been circulating around the Internet appearing to show former United States President Donald Trump playing basketball with Michael Jordan as a child is a fake, AI-generated image.
“This image of Donald Trump supposedly playing basketball with a young Michael Jordan is AI-generated,” Sardarizadeh said in a tweet.
This image of Donald Trump supposedly playing basketball with a young Michael Jordan is AI-generated. pic.twitter.com/Cwn365MAF2
— Shayan Sardarizadeh (@Shayan86) August 11, 2023
There are a few clear signs that the photo is fake, particularly Trump’s age. Trump is just 17 years older than Jordan, meaning he would have had to have been in his early 20s if this photo were real. And Trump is much older in this photo. Additionally, the lines on the basketball do not match up with the pattern seen on real basketballs.
So this was clearly one of those cases where the photo seemed too unreasonable to be real, and it’s not.
