Does a crisp in-focus photograph help identify the two Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers who were on the scene of a shooting in Biddeford, Maine, on July 13, 2026? No, that's not true: According to the content detection tool at Hive Moderation this image was AI-generated. Only some elements of the image align with details at the scene in the blurry but real video footage. One officer's forearm tattoo, visible in the video, is not pictured in the sharpened image. His "POLICE ICE" chest patch in the video is incorrectly shown as "POLICE" in the image, and its hallucinated American flag patch on his hat has 19 stripes.
The AI-generated image appeared in a post (archived here) published by the Threads account @arezk_anthropos on July 13, 2026. It is captioned:
ICE MURDERERS AT LARGE IN MAINEMAKE THEM FAMOUS
This is not a real photograph taken at the scene. Lead Stories uploaded the image to the content detection tool at Hive Moderation (archived here). Hive Moderation determined with 99.8% confidence the image was likely to be AI-generated (pictured below).
(Image source: Hive Moderation.)
Crust News on Threads posted footage (archived here and embedded below) on the day of the shooting. The post shows several video clips of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers filmed in the aftermath of the shooting in Biddeford (archived here) on July 13, 2026. The moment pictured in the AI-generated image, when one officer had his arm over the shoulder of the other, occurs at 1 minute, 14 seconds.
At 41 and 47 seconds in the video there are details visible (pictured below left) that are not accurately pictured in the AI-generated image (below right). In the blurry video a tattoo is visible on one officer's left forearm. In the AI-generated image that officer has a bare untattooed arm -- the AI even hallucinated the texture of arm hair illuminated in the bright sunlight. The AI-generated patch in the middle of the officer's plate carrier says "POLICE," and the hyper-realistic rendering shows a shadow cast by the three-dimensional stitching around the edge of the fictional patch. In the real video of the scene, although blurry, it is possible to see the text on the officer's patch actually said "POLICE ICE."
(Image source: details from posts by @crustnews and @arezk_anthropos on Threads.)
Another detail hallucinated in the sharp AI-generated image is the desert camouflage American flag patch on the ball cap (pictured below). It's not clear what kind of patch or logo really was on the officer's hat (visible above). If it was an American flag, it should have 13 stripes, not the 19 pictured.
(Image source: detail from @arezk_anthropos post on Threads.)
