False posts that Michael Jackson is 'alive in 2024' share digitally created images

Published on February 9, 2024 at 05:56
Updated on February 9, 2024 at 05:58
3 min read
By SHIM Kyu-Seok, AFP South Korea

Michael Jackson died in June 2009 from an overdose of an anaesthetic administered by his personal doctor, but images have been repeatedly shared online with a false claim that they show the pop legend is still alive in February 2024. According to the user who originally shared them, the images in the posts that appeared to show Jackson performing live on Instagram were digitally created.

"Michael Jackson is alive! He performed a live broadcast today," reads a Korean-language Facebook post on February 5, 2024.

The features a screenshot of an English-language post on social media site X, with images that appear to show Jackson during a live broadcast on Instagram.

The account has a history of sharing content related to QAnon, whose believers share a myriad of conspiracy theories including secret "deep state" plots.

The images also include tickers that appear to show five million and two million people were watching each of the purported broadcasts respectively, as well as comments from users in a live chat.

Jackson died on June 25, 2009 at age 50 while he was in the Los Angeles area practising for a planned series of concerts.

The cause was given as an overdose of the anaesthetic propofol. His personal doctor, Conrad Murray, was convicted in 2011 for administering the medication to Jackson.

Screenshot of the misleading post shared on Facebook. Captured February 6, 2024.

The images claiming to show Jackson was alive and had performed "live" have circulated online at least since 2020 in posts in English, Spanish and Portuguese.

Similar posts were shared in other recent Korean-language Facebook posts here and here as well as in Japanese here on X.

Some comments left in the posts indicated several users believed the images to be genuine.

"What is this? There were some rumours that he is alive," one user wrote.

Another added: "The Deep State forces people who are alive to pretend they're dead."

Digital creations

A closer examination of the photos shows that in both images, comments were left in the live chatroom by a user named "mikeyminds".

Screenshot of the images shared in the misleading post, with the username "mikeyminds" highlighted in red by AFP

A keyword search found "Mikey Minds" is the username of the digital artist who created these images, alongside a variety of other similar projects exclusively featuring Jackson, using image manipulation tools such as Photoshop (archived link).

After the images went viral and spurned a host of false claims about the deceased pop star in multiple languages, Mikey Minds posted a YouTube video on April 27, 2020, claiming ownership of the works (archived link).

"I'm the one who edited these 'MJ Instagram live' pics," text seen in the video read.

"It's not real pics from 'MJ OFFICIAL INSTAGRAM.' Michael Jackson never did Instagram live," it continues, later adding that he "started to do these as what Michael would do if he's alive. Basically real life edits."

The user goes on to say in the video that he creates "photoshopped pics" of the late pop star "'cause I love Michael, I miss him."

Another video seen on the user's YouTube account demonstrates the process by which he uses Photoshop to create a similar image of a fictional Instagram live broadcast featuring Jackson (archived link).

Mikey Minds also operates accounts on Facebook and Instagram, where he describes himself as a "photo retoucher/editor" (archived links here and here).

Instagram was first launched on July 16, 2010 -- over a year after Jackson's death -- with its first post being a photo of a dog shared by co-founder Kevin Systrom (archived link).

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