What was claimed
An image shows Jeffrey Epstein alive and walking down a street in Tel Aviv, Israel.
Our verdict
False. This image isn’t real and was made using artificial intelligence. Jeffrey Epstein is dead.
AI-generated image of Jeffrey Epstein ‘alive in Tel Aviv’ circulates online
A widely shared image that social media users are claiming shows Jeffrey Epstein alive and walking down a street in Tel Aviv, Israel, is fake and was made using artificial intelligence (AI).
Epstein died by suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. When Full Fact put the image into Google’s reverse image search, it flagged that it was “made with Google AI”, meaning it was generated or edited with one of several Google AI products.
This is because it contains a SynthID digital watermark which is undetectable with the human eye, but is embedded into content which has been generated or altered with Google AI products. The Hebrew street signs in the image are also gibberish. There is no such street called “Haangus Ev.” in Tel Aviv, or in Israel. Some uncropped versions circulating online also feature a visible Google Gemini watermark.
The image has been shared thousands of times online, with many social media users appearing to think it’s real.
Join 72,953 people who trust us to check the facts
Sign up to get weekly updates on politics, immigration, health and more.
Subscribe to weekly email newsletters from Full Fact for updates on politics, immigration, health and more. Our fact checks are free to read but not to produce, so you will also get occasional emails about fundraising and other ways you can help. You can unsubscribe at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy.
Altered and manipulated videos and images can cause misinformation to spread widely online. It’s important to consider whether something is genuine before sharing. Our guides to spotting AI-generated images and videos can help you to do this.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because this image isn’t real and was made using artificial intelligence.