Pictures of Mike Tyson with Palestinian flag appear to be AI-generated

Pictures of the boxer Mike Tyson draped in the Palestinian flag before his fight with Jake Paul are fake and appear to have been generated by Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Viral posts on Facebook and X (formerly Twitter) feature the former heavyweight boxing champion in the ring with the flag draped over his shoulders, with one Facebook post being shared more than 8,400 times. 

Some posts imply the image was taken just before the fight on 15 November, while other versions suggest the image was taken in the days beforehand.

But there were no reports of Mr Tyson displaying support for Palestine before or during the fight, and we could find no coverage of the event that included this image. Mr Tyson’s publicist also told Full Fact the image was “false”.

There are also a number of clues that the images have been manipulated, likely by AI.

For instance, in the fake image Mr Tyson is missing a prominent tattoo on the left side of his chest, which he has had since at least December 2023. 

The Palestinian flag in the image is also wrong. The red triangle should have its base along the hoist (the vertical side attached to a flagpole) and point outward toward the fly-end. But in the viral images, the red triangle appears to incorrectly point towards the hoist.

In many versions of the post, Mr Tyson is wearing black shorts with gibberish text on them, a clue that the image may have been generated by AI. 

In one fake image Mr Tyson is wearing shorts with gold lettering instead, and also has an additional tattoo below his right eye, which he does not have. 

We have fact checked misinformation about Mr Tyson and the Middle East before when a series of posts on Threads falsely claimed the boxer spoke on CNBC explaining his support for Palestine and encouraging a boycott of Israel. 

False claims about the beliefs and politics of celebrities are very common on social media and we have fact checked them many times. It’s important to consider whether what you’re seeing is genuine before sharing, and our guides to verifying AI-generated images and videos online can help with this.