A day after the US Department of Justice released a fresh batch of documents related to the investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, images showing the convicted sex offender with Indian filmmaker Mira Nair and a young Zohran Mamdani surfaced online. The images are fake and generated using artificial intelligence, fact-checkers have found.
Why Mira Nair Was In The Epstein Files
On January 30, the DOJ released documents under the Epstein Files Transparency Act. Among them was an email referencing Mira Nair, the mother of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
The documents show that Nair attended an “after party” of a film at the townhouse of convicted trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell. While the email does not name the film, it appears to be her 2009 movie Amelia, about pilot Amelia Earhart, starring Hilary Swank and Richard Gere.
Zohran Mamdani With Jeffrey Epstein?
Shortly after, images showing Nair at multiple events with Epstein, accompanied by a child, began to circulate. Social media users claimed that the child in the photos was Zohran Mamdani.
In one, they appear with Epstein, Maxwell, Clinton, Jeff Bezos, and Bill Gates on a crowded city street, with Mamdani appearing as a preteen. Another shows the same group, minus Nair, in a tropical setting. Epstein is shown holding Clinton, and Maxwell is pictured with a younger Mamdani.
Other images portray Mamdani as a baby held by Nair alongside Epstein, Clinton, Maxwell, and Bezos.
Actor Michael Rapaport shared one of the images on social media, showing Nair with Bill Clinton, Epstein, and a child, claiming that the boy was Zohran Mamdani. In his caption, he wrote, “Mira Nair holding her baby Zohran Mamdani with Bill and Epstein.”
A Fact-Check
Google's AI detection tool, Gemini, found SynthID watermarks in every image, meaning they were wholly or partially generated or altered by AI.
X's community notes also clarified, “The image is AI-generated and shows a nonexistent event. Zohran Mamdani was born in 1991; in 2009 (when Mira Nair attended a film afterparty mentioned in Epstein files with Clinton and others present), he was 18, not a baby.”
The Alt News team examined the viral photos and noticed a watermark “DFF” in all of them. A reverse image search led to an X account named DFF (@DumbFckFinder), which described itself as a parody account creating “high-quality AI videos and memes.” The account's bio read that it was “an AI-powered meme engine that turns stupidity into content.”
Alt News confirmed that all the images in question were originally uploaded by this account on January 31, one day after the DOJ's document release.
The DFF account admitted to the fabricated image, saying, “Damn, you guys failed. I purposefully made him a baby, which would technically make this pic 34 years old. Yikes.”
In other viral images, X's community notes read, “The images in this post are fabricated and do not appear in the released Epstein files. Mira Nair is mentioned only in a 2009 email as a guest at a film afterparty hosted by Ghislaine Maxwell.”
The Epstein files consist of millions of pages of documents, emails, flight logs, and court records related to the convicted sex offender who ran a network of underage trafficking. He died by suicide in 2019 while in federal custody awaiting trial.
