A photo authentically shows tech entrepreneur Elon Musk with a larger-than-normal chest and stomach. Rating: About this rating A rumor circulating online in November 2024 claimed that a photo showed tech entrepreneur Elon Musk pictured with a larger-than-usual chest and stomach. Users shared the picture in the days following former U.S. President Donald Trump's reelection victory — an effort Musk supported financially. In a prime example of the rumor spreading, on Nov. 10, a user on X posted (archived), "He always posts AI pictures of himself because he actually looks like this." The post, which included an artificial intelligence-generated image of Musk next to the photo in question, received more than 17.4 million views and 423,000 likes. Hours later, another user on X who primarily shares comedic and parodical content posted (archived) the photo with the caption, "Jesus Christ Sissy SpaceX." That post had more than 88,000 views and 6,000 likes. However, the truth was that an unknown user altered the photo to extend the size of Musk's chest and stomach. As such, we selected the fact-check rating of fake — a rating that applies to manipulated pictures and videos, such that they convey a false or misleading message or an outright misrepresentation of reality. The Source of the Fake Musk Photo A user replying (archived) to the more-popular X post of Musk's belly pointed out that a YouTube video was the source of the picture, prior to someone altering the image. 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, we previously published an article looking at the veracity of another picture purportedly showing Musk standing next to Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell. Sources