FACT CHECK: Image Of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney With Ghislaine Maxwell And Tom Hanks Is AI-Generated

A viral image shared on X purports to show Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, Ghislaine Maxwell, and actor Tom Hanks sitting on a beach together.

Why was Canada’s new Liberal woke Prime Minister Mark Carney on Epstein Island with Ghislaine Maxwell & Tom Hanks !!! pic.twitter.com/i0YCPZ6OaU

— Giordano Bruno (@GioBruno1600) March 11, 2025

Verdict: False

The image has been generated with artificial intelligence (AI). Another iteration of the image shared on X shows it bears a “Grok” label. In addition, an AI expert denied the image’s authenticity in an email to Check Your Fact.

Fact Check:

Carney announced a federal election will be held in Canada on April 28, according to CNN. Carney, who will face off with Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre, succeeded former liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the outlet reported.

The X image, viewed over 700,000 times as of writing, purports to show Carney, Maxwell, and Hanks sitting on a beach together. Maxwell appears in the center while the two men are seated on either side of her. “Why was Canada’s new Liberal woke Prime Minister Mark Carney on Epstein Island with Ghislaine Maxwell & Tom Hanks,” the image’s caption reads.

The claim is false. Another iteration of the image, also shared on X, shows it bears a “Grok” label on the bottom right corner. “Grok” is a generative AI platform that has been integrated with X.

Likewise, Check Your Fact conducted a content detection scan using the website “Hive Moderation,” and the results show the image is only 39.3% likely to have been AI-generated. However, it is important to point out that AI image detectors can be tricked if grain, or texture, is added to an image, according to Business Insider. Adding grain to an image reduces the likelihood that the detector will correctly identify the image as AI-generated from 99% to 3.3%, the outlet reported.

Carney also does not appear to have publicly commented on the claim. Check Your Fact did not find any credible news reports to support the claim, either. In fact, the opposite is true. On March 24, Snopes debunked the claim, indicating the image is AI-generated. Besides Snopes, The Quint, Full Fact and Newschecker all debunked the claim. (RELATED: Did Vice President JD Vance Say Elon Musk Is ‘Making Us Look Bad?’)

Furthermore, Dr. Walter Scheirer, an AI expert at the University of Notre Dame, denied the image’s authenticity in an email to Check Your Fact.

“A reverse image search using the image included in this post revealed that the image was originally generated using xAI’s Grok tool for image synthesis. The Grok watermark is clearly visible in other versions of this image on the Internet. Other, higher resolution versions of the image show the hands of Tom Hanks to be poorly rendered, as they look highly unnatural. This is a common artifact of generative AI algorithms,” Scheirer said.