Claim: The newly-released Epstein Files reveal that filmmaker Mira Nair and her then-minor son, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, were photographed with convicted child abuser Jeffrey Epstein.
Fact: The photos are AI-generated.
On 1 February 2026, social media posts surfaced claiming the newly-released Epstein Files reveal that Indian-American filmmaker Mira Nair and her son, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, then a minor, were photographed alongside deceased convicted child abuser Jeffrey Epstein.
The images include Epstein’s accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, as well as Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, Amazon creator Jeff Bezos, and former US President Bill Clinton (archived here, here, and here, respectively).
The Epstein Files
On 30 January 2026, the US Department of Justice (DoJ) published over three million pages worth of documents related to the child abuser in line with the Epstein Files Transparency Act. The law was signed by President Donald Trump on 19 November 2025, bringing the total to nearly 3.5 million.
“More than 2,000 videos and 180,000 images are included in today’s additional publication,” the DoJ said in its press release.
Epstein, a financier by profession who was friends with multiple rich and influential people, including US President Donald Trump, “was accused of sexually abusing and trafficking dozens of women and girls”. According to The New York Times, “he was found dead in his jail cell” after being arrested in 2019. His death was “ruled a suicide” but “fueled a host of suspicions about the investigations into his crimes and about his powerful friends”.
Some of the influential people named in the Epstein files include X (formerly Twitter) owner Elon Musk, Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Trump and his commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, Virgin Group co-founder Richard Branson, and Prince Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor of Britain.
While the files have exposed several influential people’s participation in Epstein’s criminal network, not every name has appeared in that context. His email communications also include names of several people who had no involvement or ties with him, such as Pakistani activist Malala Yousafzai.
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check first scoured the DoJ website to see documents that included Mira Nair’s name and found that it appears in less than a dozen documents, at least four of which are email correspondences between Epstein and other individuals.
Checking the documents
The file named “EFTA02438537” is an email sent by American publicist Peggy Siegal to Epstein on 21 October 2009, stating that she “just left Ghislaine’s townhouse…after [a] party for [a] film. Bill Clinton and Jeff Bezos were there…Jean Pigoni, director Mira Nair….etc”. She also mentioned “Hillary Swank and Gere”, both of whom were part of the American-Indian filmmaker’s 2009 movie, “Amelia.”
The files named “EFTA00733581” and “EFTA00891796” are copies of an email, without a subject, sent on 3 May 2010 by Epstein to an individual whose name is redacted. It contains a list of people from the entertainment industry, including Nair, without any message.
The file named “EFTA00578745” is an email sent on 22 January 2003 by American director Julie Taymor to Maxwell for the former’s 2002 film, “Frida,” and Nair’s name only appears as one of the multiple people invited to the event via message.
The file named “EFTA00835235” is an email sent by Epstein to Siegal, the publicist, and her associate, Andres Fernandez, confirming his attendance at a “private screening” of the 2017 film, “Disobedience,” with Nair’s name appearing among “other confirmed friends attending”.
Other files that mention the filmmaker’s name are invites or brochures, not correspondences.
None of these files, however, have the photos in question that we are investigating nor is there a direct connection implied between Nair and Epstein, with the former only mentioned as a guest.
We also noticed that when Nair, Clinton, and Bezos were at the same event in October 2009, Mayor Mamdani — who was born in 1991 — would have been around 18 years old, not an infant or a young child as shown in the images in question. This physical impossibility is a tell-tale sign of content generated using artificial intelligence (AI).
Who first posted the viral photos?
Soch Fact Check noticed that the words “DFF” are placed in each of the three photos discreetly. Keeping that in mind, a reverse-image search led to the X account @DumbFckFinder, which posted two of the visuals on 31 January and the third on 1 February.
@DumbFckFinder — which describes itself as an account that generates “high quality AI videos and memes” — captioned the respective X posts as follows:
- “Mira Nair holding her baby Zohran Mamdani with Bill and Jeff aka Mira Nair holding a Little terrorist with two big terrorists”
- “Zohran Mamdani was trained by the best of the best”
- “Tricks to the trade of becoming a successful politician in America”
In its expanded bio, the account describes itself as “an AI-powered meme engine that turns stupidity into content”.
Labelled a “parody account” by X, @DumbFckFinder also boasted later about “how much money I’ve made for people this week” through its AI-generated content on the platform.
SynthID check
Furthermore, we checked whether the images contain SynthID, an imperceptible watermark embedded in all content generated by Google’s AI tools. This can be done through a dedicated detector, which currently works through Gemini in Pakistan.
“Most or all of” the images were “edited or generated with Google AI”, according to the tool, which said its confidence level was “very high”.
Analysis by new AI detection tool
We also tried Image Whisperer, a new AI detection tool launched by Henk van Ess, an online research expert and assessor of the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN), of which Soch Fact Check is a signatory.
The first photo “is a known altered/AI-generated image flagged in our database” but was “created using an unknown AI tool”, Image Whisperer noted, adding a warning with a “Very High Confidence” of 95%. It further said the visual “appears designed to spread misinformation by fabricating a social interaction or gathering involving prominent public figures, particularly a convicted sex offender like Jeffrey Epstein, to imply illicit connections or activities where none actually occurred.
The second picture “shows signs of editing or manipulation” and is a “composite image”, with “High Confidence” of 80%, the tool said, adding that it “is significant as a digitally altered piece of content that places prominent public figures in a controversial setting associated with Jeffrey Epstein’s activities”.
The third photo, on the other hand, was “flagged [as] AI generation”, with “moderate confidence” of 50% and requires “a detective”, or human analyst. It turned up “inconclusive forensic analysis”, Image Whisperer noted, adding that it “raises questions about the image’s authenticity, making its origin and purpose highly ambiguous and potentially indicative of digital manipulation or fabrication”. The tool further said, “This specific grouping of individuals posing together is not recognized as a documented, real-world event.”
Input source, Mamdani’s response
While looking for pictures of Nair and Mamdani, we came across one (archive) on Encyclopedia Britannica that features the two in similar clothing at a 2004 event as the third image in question. It is credited to photographer Jim Spellman via Getty Images.
On Getty Images, we found four photos, including the one above, from the same event — a screening of the movie “Fahrenheit 9/11” at Ziegfeld Theater in New York City — and concluded that it is very likely one of these was used as an input to create the third viral image in question.
Meanwhile, Mamdani addressed the development, saying, “It is incredibly difficult to see images that you know to be fake, that are patently photoshopped and AI-generated and yet can reach across the entirety of the world in an era of misinformation.”
“And there’s the old adage about how quickly a lie can spread with comparison to the truth,” he said, lamenting the state of affairs. “Frankly, what it looks like today is a system that is ill-equipped for the speed and the reach of the technologies in front of us.”
Soch Fact Check, therefore, concludes that the photographs are AI-generated.
Virality
Soch Fact Check found that the visuals were posted here, here, here, here, and here on Facebook.
They were also shared here, here, here, here, here, and here on Instagram.
Conclusion: The photos are AI-generated.
Background image in cover photo: NYCMayor
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