Does a real photo from 2006 show Jeffrey Epstein posing by a pool with Bill and Hillary Clinton, Diddy, Bill Gates, Jay-Z, and Stephen Hawking? No, that's not true: The image was created with Google AI. It contains an invisible SynthID watermark which can be detected with the Google Gemini app.
The fake image was posted (archived here) on Facebook by the page Take Step Africa on Feb. 7, 2026. The post was captioned:
2006. A single photo.
Jeffrey Epstein surrounded by names that shaped politics, science, business, and culture: Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Bill Gates, Jay‑Z, Diddy, Stephen Hawking.
The image itself doesn't prove complicity. But it does prove proximity. Epstein's power came not only from money, but from access the ability to stand shoulder‑to‑shoulder with the world's elite.
And that's the uncomfortable truth: when someone like Epstein operates in plain sight, it forces us to ask hard questions about accountability, silence, and selective justice.
Whether they knew or not, the fact remains he was there, they were there, and the system allowed him to thrive.
It's not about one photo. It's about the structures that protect predators while punishing the powerless.
#takestepafrica
This is the fake image included with the post:
(Image Source: Lead Stories screenshot from facebook.com/infonet222/posts.)
Lead Stories queried the Gemini app (pictured below). "Was this image created by Google AI?" The app responded:
All or part of this image was edited or generated with Google AI.
For more information on how SynthID works to identify AI-generated content, you can visit the
. Google Help Center
(Image Source: Lead Stories screenshot from gemini.google.com/app/1936f17ebe4e676b.)
An Aug. 29, 2023 article (archived here) from Google DeepMind introduced the SynthID watermark, describing it:
This technology embeds a digital watermark directly into the pixels of an image, making it imperceptible to the human eye, but detectable for identification.
Other fact checks
This claim was also investigated by Reuters Fact Check.
