Fake photo of Barack and Michelle Obama on boat was created using another AI image

In October, social media users spread an image of two shirtless men standing in a boat along with the claim that the subjects were former U.S. President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle Obama. A timestamp appeared on some copies of the image purporting to date it to July 19, 1985.

For example, this X post (archived) captioned the image “Barrack Obama and Mitchelle on a boat cruise in 1985.“

(X user @MavenUg)

The image was also posted elsewhere (archived) on social media with captions implying (when they didn’t state it outright) that it depicted Barack and Michelle Obama. Snopes readers searched the site wondering whether the image was authentic.

It was not. In fact, it’s an altered copy, likely re-edited using AI tools, of an AI-generated image we fact-checked a few weeks before of two completely different (though equally well-known) people. 

Therefore, we’ve rated this image fake.

The older fake image purported to depict President Donald Trump posing on a boat in swimming trunks beside the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. A digital watermark on it indicated it was created using OpenAI tools. 

(X user @YvetteABonnet)

Not only are the boat and distant background identical in both pictures, but the swimsuits worn by the figures in both and the timestamp in the bottom right of some versions are exactly the same, as well. Both images feature a nonsensical pole that goes nowhere to the left of the blue swimsuit.

Regarding the appearance of the person identified as Michelle Obama in the newer edit, only the face bears even a slight resemblance to how she looked in 1985. More pointedly, she is incorrectly depicted as a young man. 

Even beyond that obvious giveaway, though, the image meant to depict the Obamas simply doesn’t align with the couple’s history or appearance at the time.

Prior to marrying Barack Obama, Michelle was Michelle Robinson. This is confirmed by the Obama Foundation website, which also has a photo of Michelle when she was a young girl. She went to Princeton University before studying at Harvard Law School.

Below is a photo of Michelle Robinson from Page 289 of the 1985 Princeton University yearbook in which she looks quite different, to say the least, from the figure on the left of the boat image.

There don’t appear to be many publicly available photos of Barack Obama from 1985, but there are images of him from when he was elected as the first Black president of the Harvard Law Review in 1990. In the AI-generated boat image, Obama’s hairline appears to be slightly higher than it is in the 1990 photos of him, possibly because the AI tool based its rendition of Obama’s face on more recent photos of him.

The boat picture couldn’t possibly be from 1985, anyway. The Obamas didn’t meet each other until 1989, when Barack Obama took a summer internship at the Chicago law firm Sidley & Austin, where was assigned to train with a young associate named Michelle Robinson. The two eventually started dating and married in 1992.

The AI image of the couple on the boat features a watermark referencing an X account on the upper left. That account, which uses the handle @iMemeDemocrats, is labeled by X as a “parody account.” It has previously posted other AI-generated images of Michelle Obama with captions amplifying a false, years old, politically motivated rumor that she is trans.

The user’s original account, which is suspended, used the handle @ScummyMummy511. Snopes previously fact-checked an AI-generated image depicting an ICE officer’s shooting and killing of Renee Good posted by that account. The account acknowledged in another post that the image was AI-generated.