AI-generated images of New York mayor, mother with Jeffrey Epstein spread online
- Published on February 6, 2026 at 08:49
- 4 min read
- By AFP Thailand
After the US Justice Department released a new batch of documents in January 2026 from its investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, fabricated images circulated in social media posts that falsely claimed they were proof of a connection between the late convicted sex offender and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and his mother, filmmaker Mira Nair. An AFP analysis shows they were made with AI and originally published on a parody social media account.
"The first husband of the current New York mayor's mother is called Epstein. I don't know how they are related but you can see the New York mayor grew up in that circle in the newly released files. It's very interesting," reads a Burmese-language Facebook post published February 1 with two images.
The first appears to show a young Mamdani next to Nair as they smile alongside Epstein and his associate Ghislaine Maxwell, former US president Bill Clinton, and billionaires Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos. The second image appears to show Nair holding Mamdani while standing next to Clinton and Epstein.
Other posts have shared another image with a false claim that it shows Mamdani as a young boy with the same group.
The images circulated online with similar claims in English, Portuguese, French, Arabic and Spanish after the US Justice Department released millions of documents from its investigation into Epstein, who died in a New York jail in 2019 while awaiting trial for sex trafficking underage girls (archived link).
Previous releases have shed light on Epstein's ties to leading business executives, celebrities, academics and politicians, including Clinton and US President Donald Trump.
The mere mention of someone's name in the Epstein files does not, in itself, imply any wrongdoing by that person. However, the documents made public show at the very least connections between Epstein or his circle and certain public figures who have often downplayed -- or even denied -- the existence of such ties.
Nair's name appears in several documents in the batch of Epstein files released in January 2026.
The first is an email dated October 21, 2009 mentioning she was present at a party with Clinton and Bezos. The second is a 2010 invitation sent to Epstein for an evening dedicated to independent cinema, in which Nair is listed as a member of the director host committee (archived here and here).
However, none of the images circulating online are authentic.
A Google reverse image search shows the pictures were labelled "Made with Google AI" in the search engine's "About this image" function.
Further analysis with its SynthID detector, a tool designed to identify AI-generated content, returned a "very high" degree of confidence that they were created using the company's AI tools (archived link).
Keyword searches on Google show the images were initially shared on X by a parody account named DFF, which regularly posts AI-generated visuals of celebrities.
The account description reads in part: "We find em all and expose via high quality AI videos and memes" (archived here and here).
Several visual clues further indicate the images are AI-generated.
First, the adults in the pictures maintain the same appearance while the child grows from a toddler into a young boy.
Second, Mamdani supposedly appears as a baby or young child in all of the images, but he was 18 years old when Nair is said to have attended the 2009 party with Clinton and Bezos (archived link).
She was previously married to photographer Mitch Epstein, but a search of public records does not reveal evidence of family ties between him and the disgraced financier (archived link).
Further keyword searches on Google found pictures on Shutterstock and Getty Images of Mamdani attending a film premiere in 2004 with his mother in which they are dressed in clothes similar to those seen in the fabricated images (archived here and here).
Other fact-checking organisations have also debunked the AI-generated pictures (archived here and here).
AFP have previously fact-checked other misinformation related to the Epstein files.
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