A photo that circulated online for months allegedly showed tech billionaire Elon Musk — who is also an adviser to U.S. President Donald Trump — standing in front of a large facility while displaying an unusually large chest and gut.
For example, on April 27, 2025, an X user posted (archived) the picture with the caption, "If you were wondering why his body is shaped like this, it's because he takes human growth hormone without exercising." The post had amassed more than 9.7 million views and 217,000 likes as of this writing.
(@TheRocketRalph/X)
Months earlier, on Nov. 10, 2024, another user also featured the same photograph along with an artificial intelligence-generated image of Musk wrapped in an American flag. The post (archived) read, "He always posts AI pictures of himself because he actually looks like this." It received 26.4 million views and 540,000 likes.
(@esjesjesj/X)
However, an unknown user slightly altered the photo to inauthentically extend the size of Musk's chest and stomach — meaning it was a fake.
The source of the fake Musk photo
A user replying (archived) to a post showing the inauthentic photo helped clarify that a YouTube video was the source of the picture, prior to someone altering the image. Snopes created a comparison between the original and fake images:
(Image courtesy of Snopes Illustration)
The YouTube channel Everyday Astronaut posted the video on June 22, 2024, with the title, "First Look Inside SpaceX's Starfactory w/ Elon Musk." As the X user's reply noted, the 2:26 mark featured the frame an unknown person later edited.
A reverse-image search showed at least one Reddit user previously shared the same doctored picture shortly after the YouTube video's release in June. Since that time, users on Reddit, Threads and X also shared other screenshots from the same video to make light of Musk's appearance.
For further reading, a previous fact-check article examined the veracity of another picture purportedly showing Musk standing next to convicted sex offender Ghislaine Maxwell, associate of the late financier and convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.