A photo, showing siblings Vice President Sara Duterte and Davao City Rep. Paolo Duterte giving a truckload of aid to Davao City residents amid the global oil crisis, is making the rounds on Facebook. The image is AI-generated.
An FB user posted the fake photo on March 27 with the caption:
“Kahapon nag,iikot ngayon namimigay (Yesterday going around, today giving away).š©µššš©µšµš ā feeling blessed in Davao City.”
It drew mixed reactions from netizens: Some pointed out that the photo was “obviously” made with artificial intelligence, while many others praised and thanked the Duterte siblings.
The image bore a watermark of Gemini, Google’s AI assistant, and featured telltale signs of being AI-generated such as showing garbled text and distorted facial features.
The synthetic photo shows the siblings and the FB user who posted the photo, in a striped shirt, posing in front of a truck loaded with boxes labeled “food packs.” Smiling residents lined up behind them.
Made with Google AI tool
The opaque diamond on the bottom right corner is the logo for Gemini, which can generate images from text prompts.
Additionally, all images made using Google’s AI tools bear an invisible watermark called SynthID. Results from Google’s SynthID Detector, which VERA Files Fact Check has early access to, showed SynthID in nearly the entire image.
More visual clues in AI-generated āSara, Polong Duterteā image
Consistent with common flaws in AI-generated photos, a closer look at the circulating image shows illegible text on the banner and on the “food aid” boxes.
The fake image made the rounds online three days after the Davao City representative celebrated his birthday and conducted a community outreach mission in absentia, as he was in The Hague, Netherlands visiting his father.
The AI-generated photo has gathered more than 11,000 reactions; 12,400 comments; and 4,700 shares.
