Image of US senator protesting dress code changes is fake

"JUST IN: Senator Rand Paul showed up to work at the Capitol barefoot wearing a red bathrobe after the Senate changed the dress code to accommodate for John Fetterman," says a September 22, 2023 post on X, the site formerly known as Twitter.

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Screenshot from X, formerly known as Twitter, taken September 26, 2023

The same image purporting to show the Kentucky Republican in a bright, flowy bathrobe spread across X and other platforms, including Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.

The posts followed Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer's September 2023 announcement of relaxed clothing rules in Congress's upper chamber, a shift that was seen as a move to appease Fetterman, the Democrat from Pennsylvania who often wears shorts and hoodies.

Schumer told the Senate sergeant at arms the chamber's unwritten dress code requiring business attire need no longer be enforced.

Many Republican lawmakers have objected to the change, with Senator Susan Collins joking that she planned to "wear a bikini."

Paul and 45 others signed a letter urging Schumer to reverse course, writing that "allowing casual clothing on the Senate floor disrespects the institution we serve and the American families we represent." 

But Paul did not show up to the Capitol in a red bathrobe; the image was created using AI technology and originally shared as satire before other users mistook it for a real photo.

Jeff Charles, a podcast host and writer for Newsweek Opinion and the conservative website RedState, first posted the picture (archived here), a reverse image search revealed.

"BREAKING: Sen. Rand Paul shows up to work at the Capitol barefoot in a red bathrobe after Senate dress code change," Charles wrote September 22 on X. "He's not even a Democrat. It's like he just rolled out of bed and didn't bother putting on clothes. This is INSANE."

Charles's bio on X states: "BREAKING = Satire."

The columnist also published fake images portraying other senators in outlandish outfits and costumes, including Schumer, Collins, Richard Blumenthal, Raphael Warnock, Elizabeth Warren, Mike Lee, Lisa Murkowski, Marco Rubio, Kyrsten Sinema, Joe Manchin, Josh Hawley, Tommy Tuberville, Chuck Grassley, Ted Cruz, and Masie Hirono.

One image in the series depicted the ghost of the late John McCain, while another replaced Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell with a turtle and Senator Mitt Romney with a rhinoceros.

Reached by AFP, Charles confirmed he created the images using AI technology, which can create ultrarealistic pictures by drawing on massive databases of information.

"The images were satirical in nature. I created them using AI," Charles said in a September 26 email.

In a reply to another user on X, Charles said he used the AI program Midjourney.

Hany Farid, an expert in digital forensics and image analysis at the University of California, Berkeley, examined the image of Paul and another claiming to show Senator Cory Booker in pink shorts.

"With a high degree of confidence, they both are classified as being generated by Midjourney," he told AFP in a September 26 email. "This means that we find artifacts in the image that are consistent with an image generated by Midjourney that are unlikely to occur in a real image."

Farid added that beyond the analysis, "you can see telltale structural problems in the images."

Those features include irregularities in the stairs, an unusual thumb position and a robe that floats above the ground beneath it, said Siwei Lyu, director of the Media Forensic Lab at the University of Buffalo.

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Screenshot from X, formerly known as Twitter, taken September 26, 2023, with elements outlined by AFP

Lyu told AFP in a September 26 email he ran the Paul image through two algorithms that detected it as AI-generated.

AFP contacted Paul for additional comment, but no response was forthcoming. The senator told US fact-checking outlet PolitiFact that the image is not real, however.

On X, meanwhile, he appeared to play along with the joke.  

"I thought I was clear when I said no photographs," he wrote in response to one post sharing the fabricated image (archived here).

AFP has previously debunked other AI-generated images, including of Donald Trump and Pope Francis.