Fact check: Image of musicians contains signs of AI generation

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging. At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story. The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it. Your support makes all the difference. A social media post included a photograph with Coldplay frontman Chris Martin and former Beatle Sir Paul McCartney alongside three members of Korean boy band BTS. The post read: 'Just saw this photo and it's amazing Paul McCartney, Chris Martin, RM, Jin and JK are all in the same frame.' Evaluation This is an image that has been manipulated or created by AI. It was recognised by Google's Gemini as having been created or edited by a Google AI product. The facts The image shows the five men standing by a large pond, with one of the BTS members appearing to take a selfie of the group. There are houses in the background that look to be British in style. The image has a timestamp in the bottom right corner which reads 'Oct 26, 10:15 am'. Google's own tools detected a so-called SynthID watermark. This is an invisible system which helps Google determine if an image was either generated or edited by Google's AI models. Google users can check if an image they have come across was made by Google's AI models by uploading it to Gemini and asking 'Is this AI-generated?' or a similar question. OpenAI also offers a version of this, but each company can current only detect images its own models have made. So if Gemini cannot find a Google SynthID watermark, that does not exclude the image having been made or edited with a different company's models. Links Post on X (archived) Google – Verify AI-generated images, videos, and audio (archived)