Gabrielle Sivia Weiniger, a journalist for The Times focusing on the Middle East region, apologized on Tuesday morning for posting a fake AI-generated picture that showed President Isaac Herzog posing for a picture with convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, his sex-trafficking associate Ghislaine Maxwell, and others.
"I mistakenly posted a photo of President Herzog, without checking the source, and I am sorry for that," she wrote on X/Twitter after deleting the original post, noting that her article in the London-based outlet did not even mention Herzog.
"Just to clarify: the photograph was an AI fake," she continued.
"I can only apologise for the grave error in judgement for reporting the photo, and to the president for any harm this has caused," she concluded.
Although the original tweet was deleted, archived screenshots of it have been posted on social media.
The images appear to show the picture behind the scandal on Weiniger's X feed, along with the following post: "Jeffrey Epstein rubbed shoulders with Israel's top brass - pictured here with president Isaac Herzog. I know there's more to investigate here. I have been following this closely since 2017. More to come..." the archived images claim she wrote.
Other social media activists have searched for the original image used to create the fake AI image, with one finding a 1995 photograph from Mar-a-Lago, Florida, showing the four individuals in the fake picture, with Herzog wearing what appear to be the same outfits.
BBC Verify confirms picture is fake, links to 1995 photo from Mar-a-Lago
BBC Verify's Shayan Sardarizadeh also linked the fake photo to this 1995 picture from Mar-a-Lago.
Herzog, who is visiting Sydney, Australia, to commemorate the Bondi Beach terror attack, has yet to respond publicly to the incident at the time of writing.