Thailand denies viral claim Macron knelt before king

BANGKOK: Thailand’s foreign ministry denied Thursday that French President Emmanuel Macron knelt before the country’s king during his state visit to Paris this week, after an AI-generated picture circulated online.

King Maha Vajiralongkorn and Queen Suthida’s trip was the first official visit by a Thai monarch to France since 1960, marking the 170th anniversary of formal diplomatic relations between the two nations.

During a state dinner at the presidential palace, Macron presented the 73-year-old king with the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour — France’s highest award — and Queen Suthida with the Grand Cross of the National Order of Merit, according to Thai media.

An image widely circulated online in Thailand purported to show Macron kneeling as he presented the awards.

One Thai-language Facebook post showing the image on Wednesday garnered more than 40,000 likes and more than 2,000 shares by the following day.

The post was also shared by a page with more than two million followers that frequently publishes pro-military and nationalist commentary.

One commenter on the post said: “I’m so happy and deeply touched that France, a country far wealthier and more developed than ours, still places such importance on our country.”

Another described Macron as “so charming” and said he had “completely won over Thai hearts with this”.

But an official from Thailand’s foreign ministry confirmed the image was AI-generated.

“There is no evidence of any image showing Emmanuel Macron kneeling to present a royal decoration,” the official told AFP.

AFP’s Factcheck service ran the picture through OpenAI’s image verification tool, which determined that it was “generated with OpenAI tools”.

AFP also compared the outfit worn by the woman resembling Queen Suthida in the online post with AFP pictures of the queen taken during the state visit, and found key differences.

There were also no images of Macron kneeling before the king in official photographs published by Thailand’s foreign ministry of the leaders at the decoration ceremony and state dinner, an AFP review found.