Claim:
An image dated July 14, 1985, legitimately shows U.S. President Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein shirtless and on a boat together.
Rating:
In September 2026, an image circulated online supposedly showing U.S. President Donald Trump and the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein on a boat together.
The image included a date in the bottom righthand corner: July 14, 1985. It circulatedon X,Threads,Reddit(screenshot) andFacebook(screenshot).
Snopes readerscontacted usto ask whether it was an authentic image or a digital creation.
This image was generated using OpenAI tools, according to the company'sdetection tool. The detector found aSynthID watermark, an indicator embedded in Google Gemini and OpenAI images to help differentiate them from legitimate pictures. AI detection toolsPangramandHive Moderationalso determined there is a high likelihood the image was created using AI.
(OpenAI)
Some social media users shared a higher-quality version of the fake image; we uploaded that version and similarly found a SynthID watermark.
(OpenAI)
Detection tools are fallible. However, there were other visual indicators that the image is AI-generated, including the fact thatcredibleimagesof Trump and Epstein show they looked far younger in the mid-to-late 1980s than they appear in the picture circulating online. As such, we have rated it as fake.
Areverse image searchcould not determine the original creator of the picture. However, it did determine that no journalists from reputable news outlets had documented the existence of the image. We also did not locate the image in credible media repositories, such asGetty Images. If the image was real, news outlets would have covered it.
AI image creators — or people circulating those images and attempting to pass them off as legitimate — often add heavy filters to mask indicators of AI. A closer look of the high-quality image revealed such abnormalities, including nondescript white triangles floating in the ocean and poles that lead nowhere.
(Reddit user Hodenmumps-164)
For more on Trump and Epstein, we have compiledvarious rumors about the pair's relationship.
