Fact Check

No, Biden Didn’t Fall Asleep at a Press Conference

VERDICT: AI-Generated Images

Some users of social media are reporting seeing photorealistic images of President Joe Biden falling asleep at press conferences, and other official functions. Evidently, this incident never occurred, and the images are AI-generated.

These images were made by a Canadian AI artist using Midjourney version 5, an AI image-generating tool. With this tool, users can type in text prompts and receive finished high quality images in seconds on nearly any subject.

Midjourney has some basic text filtering to prevent some potentially offensive image generations. There are also reports that the service bans keywords related to the Chinese President Xi Jinping.

It is evident, however, that no such filtering of prompts related to American political figures such as President Joe Biden is currently enforced by the service, leading to a proliferation of generated images depicting hypothetical scenarios including these figures.

As the 2024 US election season heats up, we’re sure to see many more uses of this technology to influence public opinion.