Fact Check: Viral images of pregnant former US first lady Michelle Obama are AI-generated

Hyderabad: A set of images, allegedly showing a pregnant former US First Lady Michelle Obama, has taken the Internet by storm.

The series of images was posted on X (formerly Twitter), with the caption, “BREAKING: Michelle Obama silences ALL conspiracy theorists and demands a universal apology after FINALLY releasing glowing pregnancy photos when she was expecting Sasha and Malia. (sic)”

At the time of writing this article, the tweet had garnered over 1,800 likes, 4.9k replies and nearly 916K views.

This is not the first time Michelle Obama has become a victim of unfounded rumours and misinformation. There has been fake news of her being a transwoman who conceived her daughters through IVF (in vitro fertilization).

Fact Check

NewsMeter found that the claim is false as the viral images are AI-generated.

We started our investigation, by performing a keyword search to find similar images on social media handles of the former US First Lady or former US President Barack Obama but could not find any results for the same.

Moreover, if Michelle Obama had revisited moments of her pregnancy and uploaded images from the past, it would have definitely caught international media attention. We could not find any such report on any credible media outlet.

We also found that the images themselves had flaws that normal photographs wouldn’t have. On closely analysing the images, we found that there is a distortion of Michelle Obama’s physical features, such as fingers and facial features and even the background was eerily blurry. This is usually seen in AI-generated images.

Interestingly, we also found noticeable wrinkles on the former US first lady’s face as if she became pregnant with Sasha or Malia recently, while being 50 years old, which is unlikely as Sasha and Malia Obama are 25 and 22 years old to date.

AI tool debunks

For further confirmation, we ran all four images through an AI tool called Optic AI. The results declared that all four images are AI-generated.

Moving forward, we found another tweet by the same X user with another claim that Michelle Obama supposedly has six fingers on her right hand.

The user’s caption reads, “BREAKING: Michelle Obama FINALLY releases photos proving to CONSPIRACY theorists that she always had 6 fingers, on one hand, all along DEMANDING a universal apology from everybody or a small donation to a charity of her choice. (sic)”

Replying to the misleading tweet, another user debunked the post by uploading an image of Michelle Obama with five fingers visible on both hands, proving the second image is also AI-generated.

With this, it is safe to say that the viral images apparently from the former US first lady’s pregnancy are AI-generated.