An image shared online purporting to show Australian senator Pauline Hanson serving customers at her former fish-and-chip shop in the late 1980s is AI-generated, not authentic. It contains visual errors and an invisible watermark indicating it was made with OpenAI tools.
Clues include seven stars on the Australian flag instead of six, a garbled “Our Town” sign and raw fish that appears to emerge from the display case. The image labels the business “Silkstone Fish & Chips,” but archived images identify Hanson’s former shop in Ipswich’s Silkstone suburb as Marsden’s Seafood. OpenAI’s verification platform detected a SynthID watermark originating from OpenAI.
The image circulated in Facebook and X posts praising Hanson’s work ethic; one Facebook post was shared more than 300 times. It circulated while One Nation’s support was rising: a September 21, 2026 voting-intention poll put the party at 25.5 percent and Labor at 25 percent.
