We came across multiple posts on the social media platform X on the following topic:

The posts claim to show images that are of the new Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney alongside Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.

Epstein and his former girlfriend, Maxwell, were charged with sex trafficking, including the sexual abuse of underage girls. Epstein died by suicide while awaiting trial, while Maxwell was convicted of multiple charges and is currently serving a 20-year sentence.

The case and alleged associations between the disgraced pair and high-profile individuals have often aroused speculation and given rise to conspiracy theories. Black Dot Research has previously debunked such claims, including one that falsely alleged a link between the renowned scientist Stephen Hawking to Epstein’s illegal activities.

Several prominent individuals and world leaders have been named in legal documents linked to Epstein, though being named in the documents does not indicate any wrongdoing. We did not find any indication that Carney was named in the documents.

One out of Four

An investigation of the posts revealed that the claims revolved around one image that showed Carney alongside Epstein apparently swimming in a pool, and three others alongside Maxwell—one next to Maxwell and Tom Hanks on a beach, another in a tuxedo, and yet another dressed casually with Carney in a group of four that included Maxwell.

When we ran these images through a reverse image search, we found that of these four images, only one was authentic: the one with Carney and Maxwell in a group of people.

The Canadian tabloid the Toronto Sun reported that the image showed Carney, who was then the governor of the Bank of England, together with Maxwell and his wife and an unidentified man at the Wilderness Festival in 2013 on the grounds of Cornbury Park, the estate of Carney’s sister in-law.

The Toronto Sun included a link to an article in the British tabloid the Daily Mail from 2013 that appeared to depict the same event.

The photos in the Mail article show Carney and his wife next to a number of other people, and does not mention Maxwell or include photos of the couple’s interaction with her.

Responding to the Toronto Sun’s questions about the association between Carney and Maxwell, a source close to Carney said, ‘The woman you reference went to the same high school as Mr. Carney’s wife’s sister. While they have bumped into each other in public settings (including the 11-year-old photos you’ve sent), they are not friends’.

Besides this image however, we could not find any credible sources that could explain the origins of the other pictures.

Instead, several social media posts suggested that uncropped versions of the images contained hallmarks of AI generation, such as watermarks that would appear following generation by Grok, X’s AI tool. Visual artefacts were also visible in some images showing misshapen fingers or spots where different objects appeared to merge.

A Single Photograph

Our search therefore did not find any evidence of an association between Carney and Epstein or Maxwell beyond the single photograph of Carney and his wife with Maxwell, for which there was a legitimate explanation. There is no evidence that Carney was involved in Maxwell’s crimes.

Furthermore, we found evidence that the other photographs of Carney and Epstein or Maxwell were artificially generated.

Our findings were corroborated in investigations conducted by other factchecking outlets such as Lead Stories, AFP Factcheck and Full Fact. Lead Stories ran the image of Carney in the pool with Epstein through several AI detections tools and found that several of them found it to be highly likely to be AI generated.

The images’ appearance, which appear to date from late January up until the present, coincide with Carney successfully running for leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada and subsequently replacing Justin Trudeau as Canada’s new prime minister, and are likely to be politically motivated.

As such, we find the claims that Carney is an associate of Epstein or Maxwell to be mostly false. While there is one authentic image of Carney and Maxwell together at an event where their mutual connections were present, many of the posts that allege such a relationship include images that could not be traced and appear to be artificially generated.