Fake photos show Jeff Bezos and Jason Statham with new hair

In short: Edited photos circulating on social media make Jeff Bezos and Jason Statham look like they suddenly have more hair, but the images are fake.

What's going on

Images spreading on X, Threads, and Bluesky show Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and actor Jason Statham with noticeably fuller hair. In some versions, Bezos appears to have very fresh hair transplant results. The Verge reports that these pictures are not real.

Bezos and Statham are both well known for being bald. The recent posts led some people to claim, or to believe, that the two men had hair transplant surgery. It is not clear how widely the posts have spread, but The Verge says staff members saw them appear in their own feeds.

The Verge notes that the edits could be made with simple photo tools, with AI tools, or with a mix of both. It also says the images it tested did not show common AI markers like Content Credentials or SynthID. Those are labels, like a digital watermark, that can sometimes indicate an image was made or changed using certain AI systems.

What to watch

More fake celebrity images are likely to keep showing up because they are easy to make and easy to share. Social apps still do a poor job of clearly labeling edited or AI-made media, so people will need to be cautious and double check before believing viral images. A good rule is to treat surprising photos like you would treat a too-perfect deal in an email, assume it might be a trick until you can confirm it.

Source: The Verge AI