The US Justice Department’s release of millions of documents from its investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein has revealed connections with major public figures, but images shared online purportedly showing former US president Bill Clinton with late physicist Stephen Hawking dressed in a princess costume are AI-generated.
Social media posts claimed the images appeared in the Epstein files, but their creator told AFP he made them using X’s AI chatbot Grok.
“New photos have surfaced from Epstein Island, showing Clinton holding Stephen Hawking, who is dressed in a princess costume,” reads a simplified-Chinese post shared March 8, 2026 on Weibo, which racked up 1,800 shares.
The pictures appear to show Clinton and Hawking holding dolls and the former carrying the latter.
The Justice Department released another three million documents on January 30 from its investigation into Epstein, who died in a New York jail in 2019 while awaiting trial for sex trafficking underage girls (archived link).
The files have shed light on Epstein’s ties to leading business executives, celebrities, academics and politicians — including Clinton and Hawking, who both appear in images contained in the documents.
The mere mention of someone in the Epstein files does not imply any wrongdoing. But the millions of pages 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.
Clinton, who is pictured in the files in a hot tub and a pool with a woman whose face is redacted, testified before a Republican-led congressional panel in February, telling the House Oversight Committee he had no knowledge of Epstein’s sex crimes (archived link).
Meanwhile, his wife and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton said she did not know Epstein. Bill Clinton said he broke ties with him before the financier’s crimes first came to light in 2008.
Hawking is pictured in the files posing with two bikini-clad women at a 2006 physics conference funded by Epstein. The British physicist, who suffered from a form of motor neurone disease, died in 2018, but his family told The Times newspaper that the women were his carers (archived links here and here).
The images circulated across Weibo, Threads, X and Douyin. Some users appeared to believe they were genuine, saying in comments that they felt “very uncomfortable” seeing the pictures.
Another wrote: “I’m not surprised to see such images from Epstein files.”
However, a close analysis of both images found they contain visual artefacts common in AI output, such as distorted fingers.
A reverse image search found the image of Clinton carrying Hawking was first shared on February 28, 2026 in a Facebook group called “Crazed AI”, while the other image was shared in the group on March 1.
The images are captioned “Image E887671 of Epstein files” and “Image E663337 of Epstein files”.
However, keyword searches on the Justice Department database for the Epstein files returned no matching documents (archived link).
The user who shared the images, Marc-André Lavoie, regularly posts AI-generated images related to the Epstein files in the group (archived link).
Lavoie told AFP on March 12 that he generated the images with Grok and that the captions and file numbers accompanying them are fake. He said he only published them on sites and groups for sharing AI-generated content and that he “never wanted to create false rumours” around his work.
AFP has previously fact-checked other misinformation related to the Epstein files.