A photoshopped image of Zuckerberg with a fake beard has gone viral on social media.
The original screenshot is taken from an Instagram video posted by Meta’s CEO, during which he announced a new version of the company’s AI, Llama 3.
But one game designer found a different use for the new video: equipping the tech boss with fake facial hair.
The fake image proved popular with social media users, with some enthusiastically sharing versions of the “hot” bearded man Zuckerberg.
Some users even took the opportunity to encourage the Meta CEO to grow real facial hair.
“Brother, grow a beard,” one user commented on Zuckerberg’s original post. “I saw what it would look like.”
Even Zuckerberg himself has acknowledged this trend. After the image was posted to Instagram by The Shade Room, Zuckerberg commented: “Okay, who did this?
Zuckerberg’s wife, Priscilla Chan, also shared a photo of her bearded husband on her Instagram Story, per People. “Has anyone seen my husband???” she joked. “And who is this guy?”
While it’s unclear exactly how the image was altered, digital manipulation of images has become a wider concern recently, following the furor around Kate Middleton’s admission that she edited a photo of his family published by Kensington Palace last month.
As for Zuckerberg’s photo, the image was shared so widely on X and other platforms that some users didn’t notice it was fake.
“That bearded photo of Zuck wasn’t real, but it subtly changed some people’s perceptions of him,” said entrepreneur Varun Mayya. of the photo in an X post. “The post-truth era.”
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