Snopes debunked an AI-generated image that circulated online earlier this week, appearing to show Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell covered in tubes in a hospital bed in extreme distress. The image was shared widely on Reddit and X before being identified as fake.
When checked, the image registered as containing the SynthID watermark designed by Google to identify AI-generated pictures, and the watermark worked exactly as intended. The evidence turned out to be entirely fabricated, despite ongoing speculation about McConnell's health since he checked into the hospital on June 14.
SynthID was launched at Google's I/O developer conference in 2025 as an invisible signature embedded in images themselves, allowing it to survive screencaptures across platforms. Gemini models have included the watermark since the program launched in 2025, and OpenAI joined in May 2026 as part of a broader effort to fight malicious image generation. Anthropic does not participate in the program. Users can check whether images contain the watermark by asking a Gemini model or uploading them to OpenAI's public image verification tool.