By MELISSA GOLDIN
Misrepresented and fabricated photographs unfold extensively on social media within the aftermath of the deadly capturing of a Minneapolis girl, Renee Good, by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer on Wednesday.
Quickly after the capturing, images emerged erroneously recognized as exhibiting the sufferer, a 37-year-old mom of three. Others had been fabricated to falsely present the face of the officer concerned or had been misrepresented to say he had a Nazi tattoo. And an previous video of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was stated to point out him talking in regards to the incident.
Right here’s a better have a look at the details.
Pictures stated to point out the officer probably AI
CLAIM: Pictures present the ICE officer who shot Good with no masks on the scene of the capturing.
THE FACTS: That is false. The pictures had been fabricated. They look like screenshots from a video of the capturing, because the background matches the placement the place it passed off. However that footage by no means reveals the officer with no masks.
Hany Farid, a digital forensics and misinformation skilled on the College of California, Berkeley, stated that the pictures seem to have been generated by AI and that they’re unlikely to replicate what the officer appears to be like like.
“We’ve got beforehand studied the appliance of AI to ‘improve’ facial photographs,” he stated. “Beneath significantly extra favorable circumstances than on this instance of the masked ICE agent, AI enhancement/reconstruction is just not constantly dependable.”
He continued: “On this scenario the place half of the face is obscured, AI (or every other approach) is just not, in my view, in a position to precisely reconstruct the facial identification.”
Sufferer falsely recognized in images
CLAIM: Two images of a blond girl with a small little one present Good.
THE FACTS: False. The images are of Renee Paquette, a former WWE wrestler, and her daughter.
One picture reveals Paquette kneeling on the bottom whereas her daughter hugs her. She posted it to Instagram on Worldwide Girls’s Day in 2023, writing that “elevating a powerful, unbiased, free considering, assured girl is my foremost goal.” The different picture reveals Paquette kissing her daughter’s cheek as her daughter stands proud her tongue. It was posted in 2024, on her daughter’s third birthday.
Paquette commented on one of many posts misrepresenting her images: “Fallacious Renée. My condolences to her household.”
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CLAIM: A photograph of a girl with quick, pale pink hair carrying a inexperienced sweater reveals Good.
THE FACTS: False. The lady within the picture is just not Good, it’s Gabriela Szczepankiewicz. Images of each ladies appeared in a 2020 Fb submit from Previous Dominion College asserting the winners of a poetry prize.
Szczepankiewicz earned an honorable point out within the undergraduate class for that 12 months’s Academy of American Poets Prize. Her picture, which is captioned together with her identify, is the primary to seem within the Fb submit.
Good — who’s recognized as Renee Macklin in her picture — gained the undergraduate class. Her picture seems third.
Photograph of man with tattoo is just not the officer concerned within the capturing
CLAIM: A picture of a person with a Nazi tattoo on his neck reveals the ICE officer who shot Good.
THE FACTS: False. The picture, which comes from a video posted to Instagram on Jan. 5 — two days earlier than the capturing — is of a unique man. Video of the capturing reveals that the ICE officer concerned doesn’t have a tattoo in the identical place as the person within the picture spreading on-line.
Within the Instagram video, a person behind the digital camera confronts the person with the tattoo exterior of a restaurant on Lyndale Avenue South in Minneapolis. The tattoo is seen within the first few seconds of the video. It consists of two black lightning bolts that resemble the SS bolts image, which was utilized by the Nazi guard, and seems on the suitable aspect of the person’s neck, straight behind his earlobe.
The tattooed man says he “had this accomplished years in the past” and that he “ain’t had no time to vary it” as he walks away.
In footage from the capturing, the ICE officer who shot Good is seen strolling down the road about one minute in with a masks overlaying the underside half of his face. He doesn’t have a tattoo behind his proper earlobe. As well as, his earlobe is formed otherwise than that of the person within the Instagram video.
Video doesn’t present Florida governor discussing the capturing
CLAIM: A video reveals Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis defending Good.
THE FACTS: False. The video is from an interview DeSantis did in June on “The Rubin Report,” an internet political speak present, amid protests that month over President Donald Trump’s deployment of Nationwide Guard troops and Marines to Los Angeles.
“And we even have a coverage that in the event you’re driving on a type of streets and a mob comes and surrounds your automobile and threatens you, you’ve gotten a proper to flee in your security,” DeSantis, a Republican, says within the clip spreading on-line. “And so in the event you drive off and also you hit one among these folks, that’s their fault for impinging on you. You don’t have to sit down there and simply be a sitting duck and let the mob seize you out of your automobile and drag you thru the streets. You’ve got a proper to defend your self in Florida.”
DeSantis was not referring to Good. He was answering a query about Florida’s insurance policies on protests that block roads.
Discover AP Truth Checks right here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck.
