Picture of Bono and Bob Geldof holding Israeli flags is AI-generated

A picture which supposedly shows the singers Bono and Bob Geldof holding Israeli flags was generated by artificial intelligence (AI). 

Posts shared on social media, including by Greek politician and economist Yanis Varoufakis, include a screenshot of a post on X (formerly Twitter) which is captioned: “BREAKING: Bono and Bob Geldof stage two-man vigil outside the Israeli Embassy in Dublin.”

The bio for the X account which appears to have originally posted the image on 16 December describes itself as offering “fake news and topical satire”. A post on 18 December from the same account confirmed the image was “fake”. 

The person behind the account also told fact checkers at Ireland’s The Journal that “the image was created by Grok AI and the tweet is satire”.

Grok is the generative AI chatbot created by Elon Musk's startup, xAI. It allows users to generate realistic images from text prompts and is integrated on X.

Mr Varoufakis later posted on X: “Friends tell me that this photo of Bono with an Israeli flag is fake. I hope it is. For his sake. (It would help if he made a statement).”

There are several other clues suggesting the picture has been generated by AI. The Israeli flag Mr Geldof is holding is wrong. It should have a white background with two horizontal blue stripes and a central Star of David—but in the picture, it has two additional vertical blue stripes. 

The fingers on Mr Geldof’s right hand are also slightly distorted. As we have written before, AI image generators often have particular difficulty replicating fingers.

In addition to this, there is no evidence that the singers staged a vigil outside the Israeli embassy in Dublin. 

This week Israel announced it will close its embassy in Dublin over "the extreme anti-Israel policies of the Irish government". But there are no credible media reports that Bono or Mr Geldof have staged any such vigil at the embassy. 

Full Fact has contacted representatives for both singers, and will update this article if we receive a response. 

We have previously written about a number of fake articles and quotes relating to public figures which were originally created by satirical social media accounts and websites, but which have then been shared widely online as if genuine, and taken by some entirely seriously. 

We’re written more about why we fact check these kinds of claims here.

For more advice on how to spot AI-generated images, read our guide.