What was claimed
Images shared on social media show US Vice President Kamala Harris as an “escort”.
Our verdict
The images appear to have been generated by AI and there is no evidence at all that Ms Harris used to be a sex worker.
‘Kamala Harris escort images’ appear to be AI-generated
Images circulating on social media which supposedly show US Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris wearing a short skirt and tight top are likely AI-generated—and there is no evidence at all for accompanying claims that there have been reports she used to be “an escort for judges, politicians and various powerful businessmen”.
One post on X, formerly Twitter, has been retweeted more than 8,200 times and has almost half a million views. The images and accompanying text have also been shared on Facebook and Threads.
The earliest example of the image Full Fact was able to find online using Google Lens was an anonymous post on 4plebs on 1 August. That site is an archive of the online forum 4chan, which describes itself as “a simple image-based bulletin board where anyone can post comments and share images”. We've not seen any evidence that the photos are real, and it's unclear where they were supposedly taken or who the photographer was.
There are a number of clues which suggest the images may have been generated using AI.
There seem to be some discrepancies with the hands in the image on the left, which can be a telltale sign. In particular, the person’s left hand appears to have one very thin finger alongside a much wider one. Their left shoulder and upper arm also appear distorted, while the image on the right seems to include gibberish text on a sign in the background, something that AI also struggles with.
A similar claim that a different image supposedly showed Ms Harris as a sex worker circulated last month, and was debunked by other fact checkers. We have not seen any evidence at all for the claims about Ms Harris previously having been an escort.
Full Fact has previously written about other images, video and audio suspected to have been made with AI, including content supposedly featuring politicians such as former US President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, French President Emmanuel Macron, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and London Mayor Sadiq Khan.
For more information, see our guide to spotting AI-generated images. We’ve also recently published a blog explaining why we we fact check certain kinds of online misinformation even if to some the claims may seem obviously false.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because the images were likely generated using AI and there’s no evidence at all for the accompanying claims.