Piers Morgan defends his pics with Ghislaine Maxwell, other disgraced people: 'I'm not Nostradamus'

LONDON, UK: Piers Morgan spent much of Sunday, February 22, pushing back against viral claims about his associations with rich and famous people who went on to have criminal records. 

What started as a single post questioning his “body language” after an AI-altered image of him with Ghislaine Maxwell began circulating on X, quickly escalated into a public exchange featuring a collage of Morgan alongside several now-disgraced public figures.

Piers Morgan says 'I'm not Nostradamus'

An X user posted a collage of Morgan posing with several individuals who were later convicted of serious crimes, writing “Piers, you do have quite the sordid history with taking photographs with massively shady characters.”

The collage included Morgan posing with Harvey Weinstein - convicted of assault, Gary Glitter - convicted of abuse offenses, Rolf Harris - convicted of indecent assaults against minors and Max Clifford - jailed for indecent assaults. There was a picture of Morgan with Maxwell as well.

Morgan rejected the implication that the photos suggested wrongdoing.

“I’ve met and interviewed 1000s of people. None of these people below were convicted offenders when these photos were taken. I’m not Nostradamus.”

His reference to Nostradamus, a French astrologer famous for his predictions, was to show that he could not have predicted future criminal convictions of famous people he was interviewing.

Piers Morgan fact-checks Grok

The controversy originally began when an X account shared what appeared to be a close, intimate photo of Morgan and Maxwell, captioned: “Strange body language for someone you barely met once.”

In the comments, the same account claimed Grok had confirmed the image. Morgan immediately disputed that.

“No, it's not real. It's been deliberately manipulated from a real photo to create a false impression,” he wrote.

He then posted the original image side-by-side with the altered one, stating:

“Given that Grok seems bizarrely incapable of verifying this accurately, here is the original photo of me and Ghislaine Maxwell when we met at a book launch, and the manipulated version…”

He added: “I expect people to create fakes, I don't expect Grok to be seemingly incapable of working out truth from fiction.”

After initially suggesting the image had merely been cropped, Grok later reversed course, acknowledging that Maxwell’s arm appeared to have been digitally added in the altered version. 

 Grok apologized for the confusion, saying altered images can be tricky without full context. Morgan, however, pressed the issue: “This shouldn’t have been so hard. The original photo was easily accessible but you kept insisting it had only been cropped, not manipulated. Why?”

When another user suggested the chatbot had “rattled” him, Morgan replied “Not rattled at all, just bemused why it kept doubling down on an obvious error. I really like Grok but this was concerning.”

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