Re: your edit

Google will sometimes show results from Reddit but ultimately link to a different post. AFAIK, the content that Google says is on the page may actually be content that is either from related posts shown on the Reddit mobile site or from another post somewhere on the subreddit (or maybe just somewhere else on Reddit entirely?). The timestamp that Google gives seems to be from when the linked post was made (with some discrepancies as to when Google and Reddit decide to round up or down in terms of unit time)

Edit: I just searched for “Planck” on Reddit and immediately found this post, posted a couple hours before the Fediverse post

Edit 2: a commenter had almost the same exact line of thinking that I had lol

To me, a new image rather than a touch up seems more likely. It just feels like there’s too much Gandhi mixed in the original post.

Google is alleging the first known version is 7 years old, which would predate AI - but I cannot open the link it only takes me to the community homepage.

There were definitely AI models for restoring images 7 years ago. I remember using https://github.com/jantic/DeOldify (which started in 2018) about 6 years ago to colorize an old photo album, and it worked well.