College Park mayor disputes altered kissing image as experts urge caution over political posts

College Park Mayor Bianca Motley Broom is disputing an image that circulated on a city-related Facebook page in Georgia in September 2026 and appeared to show her kissing a man at a bar. A witness says the depicted encounter did not happen, and a Georgia Tech professor who examined the images for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution judged the kissing image almost certainly fake. The episode has put a local political dispute in the national spotlight as voters face increasingly convincing manipulated images.

The image appeared over Labor Day weekend, according to local reporting, and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution dated a post on the city-related page to September 6. The Guardian reported on the case on September 30, saying the image had been seen by thousands of people on Facebook before the account that it was fake spread more widely. Its report supplied no measured view count. The September 30 story brought renewed attention to an incident that began earlier in the month.

What witnesses and image comparisons show

SaportaReport reported that the photographs appeared to show the mayor with a man at a bar during a January city council retreat at Chateau Elan. Motley Broom and others who were present said the images were altered using AI. The outlet observed that the pair’s positions and body language changed between images while much of the surrounding scene stayed virtually identical. It also noted other inconsistent details.

College Park resident James Walker told SaportaReport he was sitting beside Motley Broom when the man approached. Walker said the man hugged her and might have briefly kissed her cheek as a greeting, but that the encounter shown in the circulating images did not occur. His account addresses what he says happened at the bar; it does not identify who made or posted the altered image.

Georgia State University professor Arun Rai told the newspaper that certainty about the image would require forensic examination. He described the placement of a real image beside a questionable one as a familiar way to make the questionable image seem credible. No forensic report is included in the cited reporting, so the exact production method remains unknown.

How the College Park dispute unfolded

SaportaReport said the images were published on the Everything College Park Facebook page under the fictitious name Webster Wallace. Page administrator Demetris Taylor told the outlet that more than one person contributed under that name. The reporting does not establish which person created the image or posted it. Motley Broom called the photographs ‘reprehensible’ and said they had ‘no basis in fact.’ She said speaking out mattered to her family, the city and women in leadership.

Walker also told SaportaReport that he recalled council member Jamelle McKenzie taking photographs at the bar. McKenzie denied taking a picture of the mayor at a September 8 council meeting, according to local reports. She separately denied involvement in any altered or AI-generated image and said misinformation involving an elected official should not be tolerated. SaportaReport described a text exchange suggesting she had sent other material to the Webster Wallace account; the resident who published the exchange said it concerned real estate. That exchange does not establish involvement in making or posting this image.

The mayor told SaportaReport she was exploring legal options over attacks she described as false and defamatory. The cited reporting does not establish a filing or legal outcome concerning this image. College Park says Motley Broom took office in January 2020, won a second term in November 2023 and is the city’s first woman and first Black mayor. Those details explain why the incident concerns a sitting public official, but they do not resolve who was behind the post.

What voters can check before sharing an image

This case illustrates the value of checking the account and context behind a political image before passing it on. The disputed pictures were posted under a shared, fictitious account name, according to SaportaReport. Comparing versions exposed differences in the central figures against a largely unchanged setting; speaking to someone present supplied a separate account of the encounter. Neither step alone identifies an image’s creator, and Rai said a forensic examination would be needed for certainty.

Rai advised readers not to rush to share, comment on or spread suspect pictures, telling The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that engagement helps information travel. For this image, there is no independently verified count of views or shares in the cited reporting and no established measure of its effect on voters. The supported conclusion is narrower: witnesses disputed the depicted encounter, an expert found strong visual grounds to call the kissing image fake, and its origin remains unconfirmed.