Much of the imagery is familiar from previous releases, and includes things like a photo of a stuffed tiger, a photo of a framed Times of London cover of Princess Diana placed at the back of a closet, photos of the many paintings of nude women in Epstein’s townhouse, and framed photos of Epstein associates like Trump and Woody Allen.

Volume 2

The second volume contains 574 photos and one four-second video. Many of the photos feature Epstein and Maxwell in various locations. Several celebrities and politicians also appear in the photos, including actors Chris Tucker and Kevin Spacey, singer Michael Jackson, and Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards—none of whom appear in suspicious or compromising positions.

However, Bill Clinton appears multiple times in the second batch of images. In one photo, he is shirtless in a pool with a woman whose identity has been redacted; a photo that appears to have been taken at the same location shows Clinton and Maxwell in the pool. Clinton also appears in multiple photos with women whose identities have been redacted.

Clinton took four trips with Epstein in 2002 and 2003, including a humanitarian trip to Africa and London. During a portion of that trip, he was accompanied by Tucker and Spacey, according to The New York Times.

(Clinton spokesperson Angel Ureña released a statement reading, in part, “They can release as many grainy 20-plus-year-old photos as they want, but this isn’t about Bill Clinton.”)

Dozens of photos feature Jean-Luc Brunel, a modeling agent and close friend of Epstein’s. The photos show Brunel with Epstein and Maxwell in multiple locations, as well as aboard what appears to be Epstein’s infamous private jet. In several images, Maxwell is seen massaging Brunel’s feet and sticking one foot between her breasts.

Brunel was arrested by French authorities in 2020 as part of a sex trafficking and sexual assault investigation into Epstein, and charged with rape of minors over 15 and sexual harassment. Brunel denied any wrongdoing. In 2022, Brunel was found dead, hanged in his jail cell.

Volume 3

The third volume contains several hundred photos. One of those, which appears to have been framed, shows a man who appears to be Prince Andrew posing on his side on the laps of at least four women, whose faces are all redacted. A smiling Maxwell, and a woman whose face is redacted, stand in the background.

Many of the photos, however, may have been printed out as they appeared in digital storage, since the individual photo names, the file extensions, and album names are all visible. Many images with those markers include Clinton, and several were seemingly taken on a group vacation to Thailand that Clinton is alleged to have taken with Epstein and Maxwell. Clinton also joined the couple for at least one leg of a multiple-destination vacation that stopped in China, Paris, and Stockholm, another that stopped in New York, Los Angeles, and London, another trip to Africa and London, and another trip to Morocco. In one photo, Clinton is shown with a woman, whose face is redacted, sitting on Clinton’s lap.

I don’t want to admit it, but I did spend a lot of money online this holiday shopping season. And unsurprisingly, some of those purchases didn’t meet my expectations. A photobook I bought was damaged in transit, so I snapped a few pictures, emailed them to the merchant, and got a refund. Online shopping platforms have long depended on photos submitted by customers to confirm that refund requests are legitimate. But generative AI is now starting to break that system.

A Pinch Too Suspicious

On the Chinese social media app RedNote, WIRED found at least a dozen posts from ecommerce sellers and customer service representatives complaining about allegedly AI-generated refund claims they’ve received. In one case, a customer complained that the bed sheet they purchased was torn to pieces, but the Chinese characters on the shipping label looked like gibberish. In another, the buyer sent a picture of a coffee mug with cracks that looked like paper tears. “This is a ceramic cup, not a cardboard cup. Who could tear apart a ceramic cup into layers like this?” the seller wrote.

The merchants reported that there are a few product categories where AI-generated damage photos are being abused the most: fresh groceries, low-cost beauty products, and fragile items like ceramic cups. Sellers often don’t ask customers to return these goods before issuing a refund, making them more prone to return scams.

In November, a merchant who sells live crabs on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, received a photo from a customer that made it look like most of the crabs she bought arrived already dead, while two others had escaped. The buyer even sent videos showing the dead crabs being poked by a human finger. But something was off.

“My family has farmed crabs for over 30 years. We’ve never seen a dead crab whose legs are pointing up,” Gao Jing, the seller, said in a video she later posted on Douyin. But what ultimately gave away the con was the sexes of the crabs. There were two males and four females in the first video, while the second clip had three males and three females. One of them also had nine instead of eight legs.

Gao later reported the fraud to the police, who determined the videos were indeed fabricated and detained the buyer for eight days, according to a police notice Gao shared online. The case drew widespread attention on Chinese social media, in part because it was the first known AI refund scam of its kind to trigger a regulatory response.

Lowering Barriers

This problem isn’t unique to China. Forter, a New York-based fraud detection company, estimates that AI-doctored images used in refund claims have increased by more than 15 percent since the start of the year, and are continuing to rise globally.

“This trend started in mid-2024, but has accelerated over the past year as image-generation tools have become widely accessible and incredibly easy to use.” says Michael Reitblat, CEO and cofounder of Forter. He adds that the AI doesn’t have to get everything right, as frontline retail workers and refund review teams may not have the time to closely scrutinize each picture.