FACT CHECK: Viral Threads Image Showing Elon Musk In Mesh Shirt Is AI-Generated

A viral image shared on Threads purports to show Tesla CEO and owner of X, Elon Musk, in a short mesh shirt.

Verdict: False

The claim is false, as content detection scans from Hive Moderation and TrueMedia.org show the image has been generated with artificial intelligence (AI). In addition, a media forensics and AI expert denied the image’s authenticity in an email to Check Your Fact.

Fact Check:

Musk, who has been selected to lead President-Elect Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) alongside Vivek Ramaswamy, called out government spending on illegal immigrants via a recent post shared on DOGE’s verified X account, according to Fox News. The post claims U.S. taxpayers spent $150.7 billion on illegal immigrants “in 2023 alone,” the outlet reported.

The Threads image, viewed nearly 5,000 times as of writing, purports to show Musk in a short mesh shirt. Text that appears above the image claims it was captured in 2018 and then deleted from the Cobra Snake archives before resurfacing via the Wayback Machine.

The claim is false. Check Your Fact conducted a content detection scan using the website “Hive Moderation,” and the results indicate the image is 99.9% likely to have been AI-generated. The results of the same scan name Midjourney as the program that was probably used to create the image.

Likewise, Musk does not appear to have publicly commented on the image. In addition, Check Your Fact did not find the image referenced in any recent credible news reports about Musk. Actually, the opposite is true. On Dec. 2, Lead Stories debunked the claim, reporting the image had been created with AI.

According to the outlet, the image was not found in archives of the website Cobra Snake, which “sometimes publishes celebrity party photos.” The image also does not appear to stem from 2018, as text included in the Threads post claims. Lead Stories reported the earliest iteration of the image it could find was via a March 2024 post shared on X. (RELATED: Was Elon Musk Refused Service At A San Francisco Coffee Shop For Wearing A MAGA Hat?)

The outlet conducted a content detection scan using “TrueMedia.org,” which found that the image showed “substantial evidence” of manipulation. Check Your Fact also conducted a scan of the image using TrueMedia.org and received the same results.

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

“This image of Elon Musk is most likely the product of an AI algorithm. The background figures in the image are poorly rendered, looking more like illustrations than real people. Further, in published press photos, Musk’s eyes are not dark brown in appearance, but appear to be so in this image,” Scheirer said.