Texas Governor Greg Abbott shared a photo on Twitter showing the rescue of a U.S. pilot, supposedly the same one rescued from a downed F-15E in Iran. What looks to be a touching scene is instead being ridiculed online and Texas Governor Greg Abbot with it, due to the photo being AI.
While the original AI post by Greg Abbott has since been removed from his profile, it was immortalized by TikTok user GenWhyPolitics (GWP), who also roasted the governor for his seemingly poor detective skills. “If you cannot tell, just using your reasonable deductive skills, just off the bat that something is AI, then you should not be in office,” GWP says in his TikTok video.
GWP enlarges the photo so you can see it more clearly. At first glance, it’s a group of happy U.S. soldiers celebrating the return of their comrade. But the most glaring problem that GWP points out is that it also has a watermark stating it is AI-generated, too.
GWP finds it incredibly disturbing that the governor didn’t pick up on that, someone whose job is it to govern people. “You are too … old to be in office, if you can’t tell this is AI. Sorry, the time comes when you’re too … old and that time is now,” GWP says.
Governor Greg Abbott will turn 69 in 2026, has served three terms, and is up for re-election in Nov. 2026. If he were to succeed, he would be 74 years old by the end of his fourth term (and he could run again, due to the lack of term limits in Texas).
People Ridicule Texas Governor Greg Abbott For His AI Post
Many of the responses to GWP’s TikTok video were to join him in making fun of Greg Abbott. “How embarrassing,” one TikTok user wrote. “Took me about .025 seconds to realize that was AI and I’m 40 and I do not have my glasses on right now,” wrote another.
One commenter chose to point out the bigger problem here: “It should be illegal for elected officials to use AI photos, period.” Regulation of politicians’ use of AI has made slow progress, to say the least.
Another TikTok user, who claimed to be a professional photographer, noted how the photo was “too good” to be real. “If that is a real photo it would be a gargantuan historical perfectly $MM award winner across all markets.” The TikTok creator responded that it would have been a “once in a generation shot” and compared it to the photograph of U.S. Marines raising the U.S. flag in Iwo Jima.
One TikToker argued that although the governor’s team “may know it’s AI,” but that half of his audience wouldn’t. Another commenter in the same thread noted the Texas governor’s original post is gone. “Making outrageous ungrounded claims and then just deleting it. Enough to seed their base and keep the misinformation going,” they explained.
It’s not surprising that a post like this captured attention on social media. It doesn’t make your political movement look very good when you’re sharing glaringly obvious AI photos, especially one linked to the U.S-Israel war on Iran.
