One image unraveled two news stories. It showed Oregon candidate Nafisa Fai standing beside an American flag hung the right way up, and social media users concluded that artificial intelligence had produced it.
Axios and the Oregon Journalism Project, known as OJP, have since taken down their reports. Both had cast doubt on a viral video of Fai.
That video came out of a campaign event in Minneapolis. Fai, who is running for Washington County chair, stood in front of an upside-down American flag as cameras recorded.
Somali television in Minnesota aired her remarks, and viewers then carried the clip across social media.
Fai answered by disputing the footage. She shared an OJP article on X that called the video a “deepfake.”
A picture of Fai with a properly displayed flag ran alongside that article.
Fai addressed the controversy in her own post.
“This is a prime example of how AI can attempt to interfere with political campaigns and destroy people’s reputations and lives,” Fai wrote.
Axios entered the story next with a fact-check that leaned on OJP’s work. The outlet reported that Fai’s team had passed along “screenshots showing the flag right-side up.”
Axios also tied the dispute to a wider trend.
The outlet wrote that the incident “signals how AI-assisted attack ads are putting words in candidates’ mouths and creating realistic but fabricated scenes.”
Then readers on X took the picture apart. Users studied the image and listed the details that did not match the original video.
They noted that the logo of the Somali television network was nowhere to be found.
They questioned how the flag’s stars were positioned. They also pointed out that the banner carrying Fai’s name looked different.
The End Wokeness account on X contributed one more finding. It posted a result from OpenAI indicating that the image contained a “Synth ID watermark” that originated from the AI platform.
Users who reviewed the evidence reached a conclusion.
They said the original video showing the upside-down flag is authentic, and they said the image used to challenge it is believed to be AI-generated.
OJP then reversed course. Its reporters obtained additional images from the Minneapolis event, and those images showed the flag hanging upside down.
The outlet’s statement traced how the right-side-up material reached its newsroom.
“On Oct. 16, OJP interviewed Fai, who is running for Washington County chair. A Fai campaign supporter then provided a different video of the event to OJP that showed the flag right side up.”
The statement then described what happened once the story went live.
“After publication, readers raised questions about the conflicting images. OJP then obtained new images that showed the flag at the Minneapolis event had in fact been upside down. For that reason, we have unpublished the original story. OJP regrets the error,” the outlet stated.
Axios acted next. The outlet removed its story and acknowledged that it had relied primarily on OJP’s reporting.
Merira Gebel, the author of the Axios article, subsequently locked her account on X.
The final tally covers one video, one disputed image and two removed stories.
The video came from a Minneapolis campaign event, the image arrived through Fai’s side of the dispute, and the stories came from outlets that built their reports on that image.
Fai remains in the race for Washington County chair.
The footage of her speaking in front of the upside-down flag stands as authentic, and the image offered to dispute it is believed to have been created with AI.
