Featured Image Credit: Austin American-Statesman/Hearst Newspapers / Contributor / Getty
Artificially generated imagery has become increasingly and frighteningly realistic over the last year, and it has seemingly even duped major elected officials in the United States prompting many to call out a 'bleak' post from a major politician.
Amid the ongoing war in Iran following air strikes from the United States and Israeli militaries, a significant search effort was conducted after a soldier on board a shot-down American F-15 jet was reported missing.
One of the two passengers was successfully rescued in the immediate moments following the ejection, yet the other remained elusive before American forces successfully recovered the military officer over the weekend.
Many prominent politicians – including Donald Trump himself – celebrated the retrieval of the lost soldier, with the president announcing the success of what he called "one of the most daring Search and Rescue Operations in U.S. History" on Truth Social.
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There was, predictably, plenty of misinformation surrounding the missing officer though, with a number of people on social media taking advantage of the frighteningly realistic AI tools currently available to create false scenarios.
As reported by Mediaite, the most prominent of these was shared by a user called 'MissyIsMaga' on X, as her post saw an AI-generated image of the rescued soldier accompanied by the caption:
"Here is the photo of the honorable Colonel being rescued yesterday— God bless him— our soldiers are ALL doing God's work! HAPPY EASTER! 🤟🏻🤟🏻🤟🏻🤟🏻"
The post itself has nearly six million views at the time of writing, with over 105,000 likes and 21,000 reposts. It also doesn't appear that the original poster was even aware of the fact that it was AI generated, and she certainly wasn't the only one to be fooled.
In what appears to be a now-deleted quoted post, Texas Governor Greg Abbott – who has held office for over a decade now – responded to the AI generated image by writing: "This is so awesome."
It's unclear whether the post had an accompanying community note stating that it was AI at the time of Abbott's quote, but many have called the whole situation bleak as AI makes it increasingly difficult to tell what's real and what's not.
"This kind of stuff is bleak," wrote reporter Billy Binion in response to Abbott's post. "I get that we're in a new era, but we desperately need a new crash course in media literacy, or just a reminder to be remotely discerning.
"The governor of Texas should not be sharing an obviously fake photo from a slop account," he added.
There's certainly been a precedent set from the top, however, as President Trump has repeatedly shared AI generated images and videos on his own social media accounts, including one of a gold-plated Trump statue in the Gaza strip and another showing him dropping feces onto protestors.
