A social media post which has been viewed over three million times said a grandmother living in the Makerfield constituency had “some horrible brown liquid” put through her letterbox by canvassers.
The X post attached two images showing a red door with brown liquid dripping from the letterbox and the liquid splashed on the floor and slightly up the walls.
Evaluation
Several inconsistencies in the photos would suggest the image is AI altered or generated.
The images also seem to be a recreation of similar photos shared by a separate account on Facebook in February, with the drip from the letterbox looking nearly identical.
The facts
The post on X has two images. The first is a picture showing a red front door from inside the home – the door has two window panels at the top and panelling at the bottom.
Brown liquid looks to be dripping from the letterbox into a puddle on the floor. The liquid is splashed across the floor and onto the bottom of the nearby walls. The end of a wooden table is seen to the left of the door.
The second image is a closer photo showing the bottom of the door and liquid on the floor.
The images of the red door contain some abnormalities which suggest they might have been created by AI. The first image shows the chain for a door lock, however the door itself appears to have a thumb turn lock, rather than a track to which the chain can be attached. This could alternatively be explained by the installation of a new door without the chain being removed.
The door hinges also seem unusual, with the leaves – the section of hinges that are usually attached to the side of the door – visible on the frame. The hinge knuckles – which allow the door to pivot – are set slightly away from the door. This is an unusual setup, but might show a less common type of hinge, such as offset hinges.
Both images bear striking similarities to an earlier social media post shared on Facebook in February. The older post – shared during a different by-election in Gorton and Denton – said canvassers “threw what looks like coffee through the letterbox” of a mother who told them to “go packing”.
It also had two images showing a brown liquid dripping from the letterbox and splashed on the floor and wall. At first glance the photos seem to show a different place, since the door in these images is blue and the walls are grey.
But on closer inspection, there are several similarities between the images of the red and blue doors. Both doors appear to be the same style, with two glass windows at the top and panelling at the bottom.
The blue door’s handle is on the right in the photograph, while the red door’s handle is on the left. But if the picture of the red door is mirrored, it shows the way the brown liquid has run through the letterbox and down onto the door appears nearly identical in both photographs.
Both images also contain small white dots in the same place on both doors.
However, the splash patterns which are consistent across the two images of the red door, are different to the splash patterns in the images of the blue door.
The images of the blue door also contain anomalies which may suggest AI generation, including the door hinges similarly being placed away from the door. There is also some fuzziness on the door close to the lock, and a streak of liquid close to the bottom of the door that seems to appear out of nowhere.
Towards the bottom right of the second blue door image, there appears to be an odd reflection of a liquid in the floor.
Searches for both sets of photos in Google and Open AI‘s detection tools suggested that neither image was created by one of those companies’ models. That does not exclude them being made or altered by a different image generator.
Links
Post on Facebook (archived post, archived first and second image)
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