A picture of a child with cancer which has been edited to include an image of Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has gone viral on Facebook.<\/p>\n
The image was shared in two<\/a> similar posts<\/a> which have thousands of interactions from Facebook users between them. It shows Mr Farage smiling, next to a child in a hospital bed. The captions claim it depicts him visiting a seven-year-old girl with terminal brain cancer whose \u201cfinal wish\u201d was to meet him.<\/p>\n \u201cNigel Farage canceled [sic] everything, boarded a plane, and walked quietly into a hospital room no one was watching. No spotlight. No audience. Just a man kneeling beside a hospital bed, holding a fragile hand, whispering words so powerful that doctors and nurses broke down in tears,\u201d the captions say.<\/p>\n But this image is not real\u2014it has been edited with the help of artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n Full Fact has found that it is an altered version of a real photo of a real child, an American boy called Branson Blevins, who sadly died aged 11 in October 2025<\/a> after having been diagnosed with leukaemia in 2024<\/a>.<\/p>\n The original photo depicted Branson with his father<\/a>. The right side of the image circulating on Facebook matches this original photo perfectly, with details such as creases in the sheets being identical.<\/p>\n When we put the section of the picture containing Mr Farage into Google reverse image search, it told us the picture had been \u201cMade with Google AI\u201d. Google\u2019s AI assistant Gemini also confirmed the image had a SynthID digital watermark<\/a>, indicating it was either generated or altered with one of Google\u2019s AI products.<\/p>\n We can\u2019t say for sure whether the image of Mr Farage is entirely AI-generated, or has only been edited in some way with AI. We also can\u2019t say for sure whether AI was used to add the image of Mr Farage to the original photo, or if it was added in another way.<\/p>\n