Fact Check: No, Sonia Gandhi did not meet Jeffrey Epstein, viral photo is AI-generated

The release, which includes more than 3.5 million pages of investigative records and emails dubbed as ‘Epstein files’ by the media, is significant as the documents link notable names in the world to the convicted paedophile and wealthy American financier Jeffrey Epstein, who was convicted in 2008 of sex trafficking involving girls as young as 14 years.

The Congress demanded the resignation of Union Minister Hardeep Singh Puri as the opposition party accused him of “lying” about the 62 email exchanges and 14 meetings with America's most notorious sex offender. However, the Union Minister rejected the Congress’s allegations and stated that he met Epstein on a few occasions but those interactions were “professional” in nature.

When the opposition party tweeted the same, several users started bombarding the comments section with an image showing the senior Congress leader Sonia Gandhi reportedly interacting with Jeffrey Epstein.

An X user posted the image claiming (archive) the ‘Rajmata’ (Sonia Gandhi) has the same relationship with Epstein as Hardeep Singh Puri has.

The viral claim link is here and the archive link here.

Here’s the screenshot of the viral post.

Fact Check:

During the investigation, the Telugupost fact check team found that the image reportedly showing an interaction between Sonia Gandhi and Jeffrey Epstein was created using an AI tool and is being shared with the false claim.

The viral image mimics a conference hall filled with Indian people. However, when we take a closer look at the white display screen on the stage, it shows a garbled text ‘Ireimaro..’ which makes no sense and appears to be AI-generated text.

Given the Indian setup-like conference hall, we ran a Google Search query to check whether Epstein ever visited India or met Indian leaders. However, we found no evidence that the convicted sex offender himself ever travelled to India.

We then ran the viral image through a couple of AI detection tools such as Hive Moderation and SightEngine to confirm the inconsistencies and synthetic content found in it.

The analysis of the viral image by the Hive Moderation’s AI image detection tool showed that it was “likely to contain AI-generated or deepfake content”. The tool showed a 99.9 percent probability of the image being created by the AI tool.

We then analysed the image using another AI image detection tool, SightEngine. The results indicated a 99 percent probability that the viral image had been generated by artificial intelligence.

We conclude the claim that the former Congress president Sonia Gandhi shook hands with Jeffrey Epstein to be false. The analyses of the viral image using the AI image detection tools revealed that it was created using AI. Hence, the claim is false.