An image generated by artificial intelligence showing U.S. Senator Cory Booker in casual clothes, wearing a pair of pink shorts, was published on a satirical website but has been taken seriously online.
Facebook posts sharing the image, showed Booker standing in front of the U.S. Capitol wearing a pink T-shirt and shorts, alongside text reading, in part, “Senator Cory Booker Faces Criticism for Wearing Pink Booty Shorts at Capitol After Dress Code Change.”
The posts prompted responses including, “Purely disgusting & evil what our government has become!!” and “WTF! Low life.”
CBS News reported on Wednesday that the Senate passed a resolution requiring business attire on the Senate floor just days after Chuck Schumer had told the Sergeant at Arms to stop enforcing the unofficial dress code and allow informal dress.
The image can be traced to an article published on a satirical website called “The Smattering”. The website’s “About” page states, “Welcome to the most hilarious Fake News you have ever read!”
Jeff Charles, the satirist who wrote the article, also shared the image in a post on messaging platform X. The account’s bio states, “BREAKING = Satire.”
Charles said in an email to Reuters that the image was generated using AI.
Maya Krishna-Rogers, spokesperson for Sen. Booker, said in an email to Reuters that the image was not an authentic photograph.
Hany Farid, a Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and a member of the Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Lab, also said in an email that artifacts in the image are consistent with an image generated by Midjourney and that it has telltale structural problems. “Parts of the Capitol in the background are clearly inconsistent with reference photos of the Capitol,” Farid said.
VERDICT
Synthetic media. The image of Senator Cory Booker wearing pink shorts is AI-generated.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work.
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
