Does an image shared online in February 2025 show Jonathan Simpson, the pilot of Delta Flight 4819, which crashed at Toronto Pearson International Airport? No, that's not true: The person depicted in the image is porn star Johnny Sins, whose image is often used in fake posts. The image featured a Grok AI watermark and, according to an online detection tool, was highly likely to have been generated using AI.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) that was published on X on February 17, 2025. It read:
This is Jonathan Simpson, the pilot of today's Delta crash in Toronto, Canada.
Thanks to over 420 flight hours in 69 types of aircraft, his quick thinking saved countless lives.
Can this hero get a RT?
1 like = 1 respect
This is what the post looked like on X at the time of writing:
(Source: X.com screenshot taken on February 18, 2025, at 17:04:18 UTC)
The person in the image is Johnny Sins, real name Steven Wolfe, an adult film star whose image is often used in fake posts placing him at the center of current events. The Delta plane crashed at the Toronto airport on February 17, 2025, and the pilot's name had not been released as of publication time, as the New York Times reported (archived here).
The account that posted the image clearly describes its output as "parody/satire," as this screenshot shows:
(Source: X.com screenshot taken on February 18, 2025, at 17:09:21 UTC)
Sins himself reposted the tweet (archived here), noting that the image wasn't really him, writing, "who believes this?!" as this screenshot shows:
(Source: X.com screenshot taken on February 18, 2025, at 17:32:36 UTC)
The same account used Sins' image in a tweet (archived here) posted in January 2025 which claimed to show a border patrol agent, also supposedly named Jonathan Simpson, who had deported hundreds of undocumented migrants, as this screenshot shows:
(Source: X.com screenshot taken on February 18, 2025, at 17:50:48 UTC)
Several other X users posted the image without noting that it was satire, as can be seen here (archived here), and one user asked President Donald Trump to recognize the pilot here (archived here).
AI detection tool Hive concluded it was 99.5 percent likely the image had been generated using AI, as this screenshot shows:
(Source: Hivemoderation.com website screenshot taken on February 18, 2025, at 17:23:43 UTC)
The image also bore the logo of Grok AI, an AI chatbot project run by X owner Elon Musk, in the lower right corner:
(Source: X.com website screenshot taken on February 18, 2025, at 17:28:21 UTC)
Lead Stories debunked a similar claim about another AI-generated image purporting to be from the February 17, 2025 Delta Flight 4819 crash at Toronto Pearson International Airport.
