AI-generated fake photo: Juan Carlos Girauta admits error in El Debate

Juan Carlos Girauta published a column in El Debate titled «Viejos y desabrigados» (Old and Naked), based on a photograph of elderly people in their underwear that he later admitted was fake, created with artificial intelligence. The columnist admitted the deception and argued that anyone who has believed a lie must explain it as soon as they discover the truth.

The columnist **Juan Carlos Girauta** wrote a column in **El Debate** titled «Viejos y desabrigados» (Old and Naked). The piece relied on an image of two elderly people in their underwear illustrating an idea about Europe: stripped of its dignity, its standing and its cultural garb. The photo did not exist as a document. It was an artificial intelligence creation presented as proof of a real event.

## The column was built on an image that was not a document

Girauta admitted it the next day in the same outlet. The photograph of abusa intimacy had only one true thing about it: its fraudulent nature. There was no such scene, no such elderly people, no such shocking event that the text took for granted. The author himself described the blunder as «fateful»: the image was the foundation of the column, and the column had been built on top of it.

His explanation is not technical but sarracena. What moved him was a scene he took to be true. There was no deliberate deception on his part, because to lie you need to know you are stating something false. The consolation, he writes, is a sad one. The damage was already done: readers received as a document what was a fiction generated by a machine.

## The author distinguishes between being scammed and political disagreement

The columnist uses the retraction to draw a line that suits him. Being fooled by a fake image is one thing; a party changing its strategy is another. On the first, he admits the mistake without qualification. On the second, he argues that the **PP** (Spain's conservative party) did not deceive him, it disappointed him, and that **Ciudadanos** did not deceive him either — it changed its strategy by moving closer to the Socialists after **Albert Rivera**.

The comparison he proposes is explicit: the basis is the same in both cases. You play the fool walking into a trap, whether it is an all-explaining ideology like Marxism or the presentation of a fiction as fact. Girauta claims the communists scammed him as a teenager and the Socialists as a young man. It is his intellectual biography, told as a series of deceptions he managed to escape.

## Fiction and reality increasingly hard to tell apart

The point that goes beyond this particular case is technological. An AI-generated image can be presented as a photographic document and slip into a mainstream outlet without anyone detecting it before publication. The author says it without drama: if we do not want to stumble like fools into an era where fiction and reality are increasingly hard to distinguish, we had better be demanding about these things.

The column closes with an ironic concession. Perhaps the extra effort the new state of technology demands will be offset by the hours of work it will save us. Sorry, he ends. The public retraction is, in itself, the gesture the text calls for: owning up to the deception as soon as it is discovered, for everyone's sake.

## Key points

- **21/10/2026**: the date Juan Carlos Girauta admitted in El Debate that the photo in his column was fake.
- The image showed two elderly people in their underwear and was created with artificial intelligence, not captured as a real document.
- The original column was titled «Viejos y desabrigados» and was published one day before the retraction.
- Girauta argues that the **PP** disappointed him and **Ciudadanos** changed strategy after **Albert Rivera**, but neither deceived him.
- The author calls for explaining deceptions as soon as they are discovered, so as not to confuse fiction and reality.