Fact Check

Have you seen viral videos showing Walmart receipts compared, one old and one new? Lead Stories has spotted a number of such images recently and has found that many of them were created using artificial intelligence. They do not show real store receipts and they exaggerate how much prices have gone up in the past two decades. This article is…

Did President Donald Trump post a Truth Social message that included: 'What part of "LEAVE THE REFINERIES ALONE!" did Volodymyr Zelenskyy not understand?' No, that's not true: A review of Trump's Truth Social account found no record of the post. No established news outlets reported that his account shared the message at the time of publication. The claim appeared in…

Is U.S. Vice President JD Vance scheduled to meet Pope Leo XIV after the pontiff's surgery, as of Oct. 16, 2026? No, that's not true: The story originated as a joke from a self-described satire account. Neither Vance's official accounts nor established news outlets carried any announcement of such a visit. The claim initially appeared in a post (archived here)…

Did police name Tyler Gregory Sternbach as the Silver Rail Elementary shooting suspect in Bend, Oregon? No, that's not true: The City of Bend Police Department did not name Tyler Gregory Sternbach as the suspect in the school shooting that killed three children and one teacher on Oct. 15, 2026. The Washington Post subsequently named the suspect as John J.…

Does a real image show a man in midair after being thrown from the Goliath roller coaster at Six Flags Over Georgia in October 2026? No, that's not true: Lead Stories found that the image came from a 2025 AI-generated reel depicting fabricated theme park collapses. The reel was posted in a Reddit community for the "Professional use of full…

Does a viral video of ships closely grouped together in a body of water actually show the Strait of Hormuz in the fall of 2026? No, that's not true: A topographic analysis matched the distinctive coastline in the video to the area around Chittagong, Bangladesh, a busy port regularly drawing large groups of vessels. Stock photos from established image databases…

Have you seen viral images showing small sleeping pods for homeless people? Lead Stories has spotted a number of such pictures and videos and has found that many of them were created using artificial intelligence. While there are some real projects aimed at providing unhoused populations with safe spaces for overnight stays by offering them such sleeping pods, the topic…

Did tech billionaire Jeff Bezos actually say that water should be prioritized for data centers over human consumption and 'Humans won't evolve humanity. AI will.'? No, that's not true: The claim originated from a self-described satire account whose profile picture mimicked the BBC logo. Lead Stories found no record of Bezos making such statements in any publicly available source. The…

Does an image show the price changes of specific items on two real Walmart shopping receipts from 2002 and 2026? No, that's not true: The receipts are not real and the images were AI-generated. The store address on the receipts does not exist -- there is no town called Sunset Bay in Florida and no Walmart at that location. The…

Does a real photo show the moment a woman wearing a "Release the Epstein files" shirt was punched by Trump supporters? No, that's not true: Two online tools concluded the image was created using AI. However, it closely resembles a real-life incident at an October 2026 Trump rally in Youngstown, Ohio, but the woman shown in news photos of that…

Does a real video show a woman shooting robbers from her car? No, that's not true: The clip appears to be a digital recreation of a June 2021 road rage incident in South Florida in which a man driving one car opened fire on another. The video and others like it digitally swap one person's likeness for another's, but the…

Did President Donald Trump accuse Ukraine of midterm election interference after Russian bot farm strikes? No, that's not true: The story originated on The Betoota Advocate, an Australian satirical news website. There is no evidence that Trump ever made such an accusation or issued a statement matching the claim, and no media coverage supports it. The claim appeared in an…

Did Donald Trump actually post a reply to 'Peter Girnus' who previously pretended to be a member of the Nobel Committee? No, that's not true: The screenshot displayed the wrong handle for Trump's Truth Social account -- @notRealDonaldTrump instead of @realDonaldTrump. Neither a search of his Truth Social account nor an archive of his posts showed any such reply. The…

Did President Donald Trump post a video montage showing real lion and tiger attacks on people to Truth Social? No, that's not true: He posted a montage of five clips, of which three were AI-generated, on Oct. 13, 2026. Of the remaining two clips in the montage, one shows a documented 2018 incident and the other, dating back to at…

Does a video show the man who fell to his death in Atlanta in October 2026 standing up on a Six Flags roller coaster? No, that's not true: The footage is from a November 2024 incident in Arizona where a man jumped off a roller coaster after realizing there was a problem with his harness. It does not show the…

Does a chart show real data of the drop-off in far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) bot activity since Ukraine bombed several Russian data centers? No, that's not true: This chart shows a prediction of the future, not a factual graph of what had already happened. The line graph, shared without sourcing on Oct. 11, 2026, shows a line going all…

Does a real photo show then-President George W. Bush, then-Vice President Dick Cheney, then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Osama bin Laden sitting together? No, that's not true: The image is an edited version of a photo taken at the Pentagon on Sept. 12, 2001, the day after the 9/11 attacks. Osama bin Laden was edited into the original photo,…

Was a post about how the Nobel Peace Prize committee rejected Trump's bid written by a Nobel committee member? No, that's not true: The author, Peter Girnus, is not listed among the five members of the 2026 Norwegian Nobel Committee. He is a social media content creator who describes himself as a "satirist." His posts typically use a boastful style,…

Did 'Task & Purpose' publish an article implying that 'Sarah Miller' was appointed the 'first executioner' in the Nidal Hasan's case? No, that's not true: Neither the outlet's website nor its social media accounts contained such a story. The soldier pictured in the fake screenshot is actually Sgt. Samantha Wendt, a canine handler whose photos appear on a U.S. government…

Is time-stamped surveillance camera footage from James Talarico's house real? No, that's not true: The image is AI-generated, according to analysis by online detection tools. One tool assessed the image as 99.9% "Likely to be AI-generated," while another indicated it was created using OpenAI tools. The claim appeared in a post (archived here) by the @RheinAmacher account on X on…