Tesco is not giving away free food boxes to people who like a Facebook post

We’ve spotted another Facebook post claiming that the supermarket chain Tesco is giving away a free box of food to everyone who ‘likes’ a post.

The post also claims there is “the additional chance of winning £100 cash” if you give the post a “thumbs up”.

But the supermarket confirmed to Full Fact this offer isn’t a genuine promotion from Tesco.

When we searched the accompanying image of the woman holding a Tesco branded box using Google’s reverse image search tool and then selected the ‘about this image’ tab, a note under the image said it was “made with Google AI”.

Google’s tool did not provide further details, so we can’t say for sure what that’s based on. But a page explaining how Google finds information about an image says “some images may contain data that shows if they were generated with AI”, such as a SynthID.

A SynthID is a digital watermark that is undetectable with the human eye, but is embedded into content made with several Google AI products. The watermark remains detectable despite any changes made to the quality or size of the picture.

This is not the first time we’ve seen Facebook posts falsely claiming supermarkets are giving away parcels of free food. We also fact checked variations of free Tesco food boxes recently.

It is always worth checking posts sharing offers that seem too good to be true. One way to verify this is to see whether the offer has been shared by the company’s official page—this will often have more followers, a verified blue tick on platforms like Facebook or Instagram and a longer post history.