AN IMAGE SHARED by Yanis Varoufakis, a former Greek finance minister, that purports to show Irish rock stars holding Israeli flags is AI-generated.

The image, which is said to show Bono and Bob Geldof staging a “two-man vigil” outside the Israeli Embassy in Dublin, was first posted by a satirical social media account, which has confirmed to The Journal that it was created by an Artificial Intelligence (AI) and was never meant to be taken seriously.

“In the midst of a genocide, with thousands of maimed orphaned children going to bed without having eaten for days or water to wash their wounds, Bono and Geldof decided to show their solidarity with the rogue Apartheid state responsible,” wrote Yanis Varoufakis on X.

Varoufakis’s 18 December X post includes a screenshot of another post by the account Dr Harold News, which showed an image of Bono and Geldof in a field holding Israeli flags.

“BREAKING: Bono and Bob Geldof stage two-man vigil outside Israeli Embassy in Dublin,” that post reads.

Varoufakis’s post has been shared more than 600 times and was viewed on X more than 306,100 times. It was also shared further on other social media platforms, including multiple posts on Facebook that copied Varoufakis’s post word-for-word.

Varoufakis was Greece’s minister for finance for much of 2015, gaining international recognition during the country’s debt crisis.

However, there are signs that the image he shared may not be real.

The picture is set in a field surrounded by verdant hedges, unlike the area outside the Israeli embassy, which, aside from some leafy residential gardens across the road, is located in a concrete-laden area of Dublin city.

Last week, Israel announced it is closing that embassy down, following Ireland’s decision to intervene in a case taken by South Africa against Israel for genocide that is currently before the International Court of Justice.

The clothes worn by the two rock stars in the image are inconsistent, with Bono’s buttons being of various sizes (including one on the bottom of this suit jacket’s lapel), and a ridge appearing on one sleeve of Geldof’s jacket, but not the other.

These are all indications that the image might be AI-generated.

Reverse image searches for the image, or similar images that may have been manipulated, all indicate that the Dr Harold News account was the first to post the picture.

“My page is clearly labelled ‘satire’ and ‘fake news’, so I wasn’t expecting anyone to assume the photo is real,” the person behind the account told The Journal.

“I can confirm the image was created by Grok AI and the tweet is satire.”

Grok AI is an Artificial Intelligence platform that can create images based on image prompts. It is available to users of the social media platform X.

At the time of writing, Varoufakis’s tweet is still live, even though some replies have cast doubt on its authenticity and a “community note” – X’s scheme to prevent misinformation – has been attached to it.

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