AI-generated image of Bad Bunny burning flag circulates ahead of Super Bowl
- Published on February 9, 2026 at 23:17
- 3 min read
- By Bill MCCARTHY, AFP USA
Ahead of Puerto Rican superstar Bad Bunny's performance at the National Football League's Super Bowl halftime show, conservative social media users outraged over the Grammy-winning singer's Spanish-language music claimed an image captured him burning a US flag and wearing a dress in the colors of the transgender pride flag during a rehearsal. But the image is a fake created by artificial intelligence; it contains various irregularities typical of AI-generated content and appears to have originated on a satire page.
"NFL half-time show," says a February 8, 2025 post on X. "Change the channel."
Similar posts spread across platforms, with some claiming the shot shows Bad Bunny "running through rehearsals" or "preparing for his Super Bowl Halftime show" and others alleging he "did this at the end" of the performance itself.
Several users, including conservative commentator Benny Johnson, shared the image while urging viewers to boycott or tune in to an alternative show streamed by conservative activist group Turning Point USA and headlined by Kid Rock.
Bad Bunny, whose real name is Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio, rattled through a series of hits starting with "Titi Me Pregunto" in a Spanish-language set that emphasized unity and Puerto Rican culture while featuring brief cameos from celebrities including actor Pedro Pascal and Colombian singer Karol G.
The Puerto Rican artist, who spoke out against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at the Grammys on February 1, has drawn the ire of Donald Trump. The US president posted after the February 8 Super Bowl halftime show that "nobody understands a word this guy is saying."
Bad Bunny has also spoken supportively of the LGBTQ community. And on several occasions, he has worn a skirt, including for a 2022 Harper's Bazaar photoshoot.
But the image purporting to show him burning a US flag while donning a blue, white and pink dress is a fabrication.
Reverse image searches in Google returned a result saying the visual was "made with Google AI." Gemini, Google's AI tool, also detected a SynthID -- an invisible watermark the company says is meant to identify AI content created using its tools -- attached to the picture.
The same reverse image searches surfaced what appears to be the earliest iteration of the image, shared by a Facebook page dedicated to satire and parody. The account's bio reads: "Ai funny content & Master Meme Maker - 100% Not Real everything is Satire."
AFP reached out to the apparent creator for comment, but no response was immediately forthcoming.
The image contains several inconsistences typical of AI-generated content, including warped faces in the background and an American flag that contains only 11 stripes -- instead of the 13 stripes on real flags that are meant to represent the original 13 British colonies.
Bad Bunny also has various tattoos across his chest and arms that are not present in the fake (archived here).
During his actual Super Bowl halftime show performance, Bad Bunny did not burn a US flag; on the contrary, he appeared at one point in front of flags for the United States and several other countries as he said "God bless America" and then shouted out all the North, South and Central American nations (archived here).
He wore an all-white suit with his last name stitched on the back, and he was never surrounded by filming fans as in the AI-generated fake.
AFP has previously debunked other misinformation about Bad Bunny here.
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