Texas governor shares fake image depicting rescued US airman

"Here is the photo of the honorable Colonel being rescued yesterday. God bless him— our soldiers are ALL doing God's work! HAPPY EASTER!" said an April 5, 2026 post on X, which has since been deleted.

Abbott, a close ally of US President Donald Trump and the governor of Texas since 2015, shared the post.

Image

Screenshot from X taken April 5, 2026, with AI logo added by AFP

Similar posts spread across X and other platforms after Trump announced April 5 that US special forces had successfully extracted the weapons system operator who ejected from an aircraft that was downed April 3 in Iran.

Trump said the crew member, who evaded capture as both the United States and Iran raced to find him, had been "seriously wounded." The high-risk rescue operation involved more than 170 American aircraft and some 200 troops.

According to news reports and screenshots shared online, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Republican Congressman Mike Lawler also amplified the image purporting to show the rescued airman smiling and surrounded by the US special forces aboard an aircraft (archived here and here).

But the US government had not released any official photo of the rescued service members as of April 7 (archived here).

The image is a fake that appears to have been generated by AI -- and Abbott, Paxton and Lawler have all deleted their posts.

Hive Moderation, a tool designed to detect AI imagery, assessed that the picture "is likely to contain AI-generated or deepfake content."

Matthew Stamm, an electrical and computer engineering professor who leads the Multimedia and Information Security Lab at Drexel University, also examined the image for AFP alongside doctoral student Tai Nguyen, using a program they developed to detect AI-generated images (archived here).

"Our software indicated that this image is AI-generated," Stamm told AFP in an April 6 email, explaining that the software is based on peer-reviewed research and "searches for invisible statistical traces left in an image by generative AI."

"Taken together with other evidence, this can be enough to more confidently say that this image is not real," he said.

The additional evidence includes a "made with AI" label eventually attached to the post shared by Abbott, and several subtle visual irregularities typical of AI content.

Image

Screenshot from X taken April 6, 2026, with AI logo added and other elements outlined by AFP

The American flag held by the airman in the image, for example, has a white border to the left of the blue background containing 50 stars, Stamm said.

"This doesn't appear on a real American flag. Since the red stripes on the flag extend to the edge, we can rule out the possibility that this is an extra piece of white fabric added to anchor the flag to a rope." 

Stamm also noted inconsistent coloring between the straps on the man's uniform.

AFP observed that a flag patch on a second soldier appears misshapen and misplaced. The patch appears to be floating over the man's chest, but US Army regulations stipulate that soldiers wear flag patches on their right shoulder (archived here and here). 

AFP identified other deformities with the troops' watches and another soldier's sunglasses, which appear painted onto his face.

Image

Screenshot from X taken April 7, 2026, with AI logo added and elements outlined by AFP

Another set of experts told the US fact-checking website PolitiFact that they also believed the image was AI-generated.

Abbott previously shared video game footage that was misrepresented as a scene from the war in the Middle East, and in 2023 he reposted a fake story about musician Garth Brooks.

AFP has debunked other misinformation about the war here.