Fake images of Jeff Bezos and Jason Statham with hair spread on social media
Edited images showing bald Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and actor Jason Statham with full heads of hair are circulating on X, Threads and Bluesky. A Verge journalist checked them and found they are fabricated.
Images showing Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and actor Jason Statham with substantially more hair than usual are circulating on the social networks X, Threads and Bluesky. Both men are well known for their shaved heads. Some people who shared the pictures claimed, or seemingly believed, that the two had undergone hair transplant surgery. Jess Weatherbed, a journalist at the technology site The Verge, examined the images and concluded they are fake.
How the images were debunked
It is unclear how widely the posts have spread, but they were prevalent enough that several members of The Verge team came across them in their feeds. It is also unknown whether AI tools were used to make them: none of the tested images showed Content Credentials or SynthID markers. Nor could it be fully established when they were first posted or who made them.
The journalist ran the images through Google's reverse image search. In Bezos' case, she found photographs with a similar background and the exact same outfit, but without hair, carrying a watermarked credit. Searching that credit led to the unaltered originals, taken in 2023. The original images of Statham were even easier to find: they were taken by a paparazzo in 2011.
Other signs
According to the author, Bezos and Statham are probably not realistic candidates for hair transplants anyway, since the procedure requires enough donor hair from the back and sides of the head. Transplant patients also typically have noticeable facial swelling for about the first week, which Bezos does not show. Wigs and other hair systems would also be an unlikely choice.
Not the first case
The author notes that similar fakes have fooled people before, such as the viral image of the pope in fashionable clothing. Recent trends have included paparazzi photos of celebrities such as Callum Turner, Harry Styles and Noah Schnapp being edited to remove their shirts. Such edits are typically made to gather likes and reposts. To check an image, she advises tracking down the original photograph.
