{"id":516225,"date":"2026-04-06T17:47:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-06T17:47:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/516225\/"},"modified":"2026-04-06T17:47:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-06T17:47:07","slug":"republicans-fooled-by-ai-generated-image-of-us-airman-rescued-in-iran-us-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/516225\/","title":{"rendered":"Republicans fooled by AI-generated image of US airman rescued in Iran | US politics"},"content":{"rendered":"

Republican<\/a> politicians were hoaxed over the weekend by an image purporting to be a downed US warplane crew member rescued<\/a> by military special forces in Iran on Saturday, igniting a call for a national \u201ccrash course in media literacy\u201d.<\/p>\n

Greg Abbott<\/a>, the Texas governor, Ken Paxton<\/a>, the state\u2019s attorney general and a US Senate candidate, and Mike Lawler, a New York representative, were all caught out for \u201cliking\u201d a fake picture of the airman, who has not been publicly identified.<\/p>\n

Donald Trump on Monday afternoon was scheduled to hold a news conference in which he was expected to discuss details of the rescue mission.<\/p>\n

The AI-generated image that fooled the Republican politicos was shared <\/a>by a pro-Trump X account. The supposed airman is shown surrounded by smiling military members, with a US flag draped across his lap.<\/p>\n

The fake image has been reshared more than 21,000 times on the X platform and now carries a warning: \u201cThis photo probable AI generated.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is so awesome,\u201d Abbott wrote<\/a> to his 1.4 million X followers in a since-deleted post. Alluding to how the rescue operation began and ended, respectively, on Friday and Sunday of Easter weekend, the governor added: \u201cGod is sending a message to our enemies!\u201d<\/p>\n

Lawler also shared the picture, adding the caption: \u201cGod Bless America!\u201d<\/p>\n

AI slop around news events has rapidly become commonplace. After US forces seized Nicol\u00e1s Maduro, the Venezuelan dictator, in January, AI-generated images flooded social media of him being escorted off a plane by US law enforcement agents, jubilant Venezuelans, and missiles raining down on Venezuela\u2019s capital, Caracas.<\/p>\n

At the time, NewsGuard\u2019s misinformation editor, Sofia Rubinson, said that fake images were sometimes plausible because they \u201cdo not drastically distort the facts on the ground\u201d.<\/p>\n

But Rubinson warned <\/a>\u201cthe use of AI-generated fabrications and dramatic, out-of-context footage is being used to fill gaps in real-time reporting and represents another tactic in the misinformation wars\u201d.<\/p>\n

After Abbott\u2019s error, Billy Binion of the libertarian magazine Reason wrote<\/a>: \u201cThis kind of stuff is bleak. I get that we\u2019re in a new era, but we desperately need a new crash course in media literacy, or just a reminder to be remotely discerning.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Texas governor, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday, has been duped before. In March, he posted what he believed was footage of an Iranian plane being shot down by a US warship \u2013 but the film was taken from the second world war-themed video game War Thunder.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, in 2023, he was widely mocked<\/a> after sharing a fake article about the country singer Garth Brooks being booed off a Texas stage over supporting Bud Light while the beer brand faced real-life criticism from US political conservatives for working with the trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney on a promotional campaign.<\/p>\n

Republicans are not the only political customers for image fakes. An AI-generated picture of Trump using a walker uploaded by the Democratic party strategist Keith Edwards was viewed about 13.5m times in December, according to an article in Futurism.<\/p>\n

Gavin Newsom, the California governor, has become practiced at posting AI-generated fakes to reinforce political messaging, including one that showed<\/a> Trump, Pete Hegseth and Stephen Miller being led away by the FBI in handcuffs.<\/p>\n

A fake image of federal agents surrounding the Minneapolis ICU nurse Alex Pretti with one holding a gun against his head was widely shared after a border patrol officer killed Pretti in January. Fakes were also created after Renee Good was killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent days earlier.<\/p>\n

\u201cDetails can get mistaken or altered in a way that is dangerous in these very volatile situations,\u201d Hany Farid, a University of California digital forensics expert, told the Minneapolis Star Tribune<\/a>. \u201cIn the fog of war and in conflict, it is just really messy, and we are simply adding noise to an already complicated and difficult situation.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Republican politicians were hoaxed over the weekend by an image purporting to be a downed US warplane crew…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":516226,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,86,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-516225","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-technology","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=516225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516225\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/516226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=516225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=516225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=516225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}