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Purported risqué photos of Kamala Harris are not legitimate | Fact check

Gabrielle Settles   Paste BN
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The claim: Photos show Kamala Harris used to be a sex worker

An Aug. 7 Facebook post (direct link, archive link) shows two pictures of what appears to be Vice President Kamala Harris in revealing clothing.

"Just so everyone knows how she got her start.....DNC must be proud," the caption reads.

The post was shared 24,000 times in three weeks.

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Our rating: False

There's no evidence from credible sources that Harris had any history as a sex worker, and the photos in question have characteristics consistent with being AI-generated.

Harris' lengthy career history involves legal, legislative work

Several clues in the images of Harris indicate they were likely generated by AI.

In the picture to the left, one of her fingers is noticeably skinnier than the others, and the car behind her is missing tail lights. In the picture on the right, Harris' arm appears to curve unnaturally into the rest of her body.

Walter Scheirer, a professor at the University of Notre Dame who specializes in visual disinformation, told Paste BN the visual errors are consistent with those seen in AI-generated images. He also noted the lack of legitimate sourcing for the image.

"Provenance is important to consider," Scheirer said. "This post was not made from a trusted professional news source. It is a partisan political attack from a user of Facebook. Kamala Harris is a major public figure who is widely reported on. If something this sensational were true, we would have heard about it in the news a long time ago."

Indeed, the many profiles of Harris that have been written as she rose from state official to senator to vice president to presidential candidate report nothing in this vein. There is likewise no credible news reporting of her ever working as a sex worker.

And the digital trail for these images shows a recent origin. TinEye, a reverse image search tool, shows the earliest version of the pictures appear to have begun circulating on Aug. 10. If the photos were real they likely would have existed long before then.

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Harris graduated from Howard University in 1986 with a degree in political science and economics. She attended law school at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law and graduated in 1989.

In 1990, Harris was hired as a prosecutor in Alameda County, California. She was later appointed to the state's Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board and the Medical Assistance Commission. She became an assistant district attorney in San Fransisco in 1998, eventually winning the race for district attorney there in 2003.

Harris went on to become California's attorney general in 2011 and then won a seat in the U.S. Senate in 2016. She became President Joe Biden's pick for vice president in 2020 and four years later became the Democratic Party's official nominee for president.

Paste BN reached out to the user who shared the post for comment but did not receive a response.

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