Does a real yearbook photo show an edgy punk teenage Pete Hegseth with black spiky hair and eyeliner? No, that's not true: The image is AI-generated and is not Pete Hegseth's yearbook photo. Forest Lake High School has an archive of past yearbooks and the real yearbook photos of Hegseth in his sophomore, junior, and senior year are different. The Hive Moderation content detection tool determined with 99.9% confidence that this image was AI-generated.
The image resurfaced in a post (archived here) published by the X account @taradublinrocks on July 16, 2026. It was captioned:
Pete Hegseth's senior yearbook pic has me cackling because he looks like the lead singer in a 90s pop punk cover band called All Time Low-T
lol nice alpha male guyliner,
@PeteHegseth
😂😂😂
This is the image included with the post:
(Image source: @taradublinrocks post on X.)
An earlier copy of the image was published in a slideshow of nine memes and photos by the Instagram account @mericandavid on June 17, 2026 (archived here). This account's bio mentions satire:
Laugh in the devil's face
Satirical Cultural Analysis🎙️
The post was captioned:
Did you know me when I was twink?
The two lines of the senior quote visible in the Instagram image say:
Pete Hegseth
"Speak plainly, stand your ground,
and never back down."
Lead Stories uploaded the images from both X and Instagram (archived here and here) to the Hive Moderation AI-generated content detection tool. In both cases the input was determined 99.9% likely to be AI-generated, with GPT identified as the source (result from X pictured below).
(Image source: Hive Moderation.)
Lead Stories also uploaded the image to the Verify tool from OpenAI which can detect images generated with ChatGPT, the OpenAI API, or Codex. A SynthID watermark, which originated from OpenAI, was detected.
(Image source: OpenAI.)
Hegseth attended Forest Lake High School in Minnesota, and graduated in 1999. The school has an online archive of past yearbooks (archived here). Hegseth's real senior yearbook pictures are different from the fake image circulating. He appears in three portrait photos in the 1999 yearbook (archived here), always appearing with a very short, clean-cut hairstyle.
One color photo has just his name:
(Image source: The Forester Yearbook 1999.)
There is a black and white photo with the quote:
"The hard core fans have stuck with us through thick and thin."
-Peter Hegseth
(Image source: The Forester Yearbook 1999.)
On one page his portrait appears with two other football team captains, with a quote about his favorite game of the season:
"My favorite game was Homecoming, we came out on top, and the fans rushing the field was a huge rush."
-Peter Hegseth
(Image source: The Forester Yearbook 1999.)
Photos of Hegseth from his sophomore and junior year (pictured below, blur added by Lead Stories), appearing in the 1997 and 1998 yearbooks (archived here and here), show him with a buzz cut. Portraits of the freshman class are not included in the 1996 yearbook (archived here).
(Image source: The Forester Yearbook 1997.)
(Image source: The Forester Yearbook 1998.)
