An unclear, blurred picture that social media users claim shows European leaders sitting on chairs with bowed heads in a White House corridor, waiting to meet US President Donald Trump, has gone viral online.
Several European leaders travelled to the US to meet Trump on Monday, 18 August. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was flanked by seven European leaders, including French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, among others.
The meeting between Trump and Zelenskyy, joined by European leaders, comes following Trump’s talks with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin in Alaska last Friday. The coalition of European leaders joined Zelenskyy at the White House to shore up his position and to help push for continued support for Ukraine.
Following the meeting with European leaders at the White House on Monday, this image claiming to feature these top political leaders surfaced and was later widely shared online.
It was shared alongside captions alleging the leaders were being left to wait for Trump, asserting they were submissive to the US president.
One social media account said it was a humiliation, calling the leaders “vassals at the court of the Mad Emperor”. Another compared them to schoolchildren being lined up outside the principal’s office, a scenario in which Trump is presumed to be the headmaster.
The image was also shared by an established pro-Russian account with the caption “the picture of the day”.
However, the image is false.
Mangled hands and extra feet
This was confirmed by several Artificial Intelligence (AI) detection tools through which Euroverify checked the image. At least three tools stated the image was most likely generated by AI.
A reverse image search by Euroverify produced a higher-quality version of the image. It shows a person sitting at the front of the row who vaguely looks like French President Emmanuel Macron.
When looking more closely at this image, it clearly contains discrepancies typical of AI-generated images. The fingers of his left hand are mangled and out of proportion.
Additionally, between the figure at the front and the blonde woman next to him, a pair of feet can be spotted without another person sitting in this spot.
Meanwhile, online posts claim the people sitting to his left are other European leaders present at the meeting, but none of the other figures in the picture look like those attending the Washington, DC talks.
The image also did not appear on the websites of any reputable news organisations covering the meeting. Finally, the picture was already shared on Sunday, 17 August, one day ahead of the meeting taking place.
Some social media users have picked up on the fact that the photo is AI-generated by making fun of the obvious discrepancies commonly linked to such imagery. Meanwhile, others explained why it is fake in community notes on X.
Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation, a working body of the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine, also shared the photo, stating it was false.
“A fake photo is spreading online, allegedly showing European leaders who came to meet with US President Donald Trump sitting in a row waiting near the Oval Office,” its post read.
“In reality, this photo was created using artificial intelligence and is being spread by russian propaganda to discredit European leaders and devalue the significance of their participation in the negotiation process,” it added.
Since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, its spreading of disinformation has risen dramatically. Various examples of Russian fabrications as part of this tactic include bad photo editing, but also fake reports and websites pretending to be Western media outlets.
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