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This image doesn't show pilot of crashed Delta jet. That's AI and a porn star | Fact check

Joedy McCreary   Paste BN
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The claim: Pilot of crashed Delta plane identified as 'Jonathan Simpson'

A Feb. 18 Threads post (direct link, archive link) shows an image of what appears to be a Delta Air Lines pilot alongside an image of a crashed Delta Airlines plane.

“This is Jonathan Simpson, the pilot of today's Delta crash in Toronto, Canada,” the post’s text reads in part.

The Threads post received more than 500 likes in a day. Similar versions of the claim circulated widely on Instagram and elsewhere on Threads.

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Our rating: False

The man in the image is not a Delta pilot, but an adult film actor who frequently appears in memes. That image is fabricated, with an expert and an AI-detection tool determining it was generated by artificial intelligence. The claim originated on a satirical website.

Claim originated from satirical X account

A Delta regional jet flipped and caught fire while landing Feb. 17 in Toronto. Officials say 21 people on board were injured. But the image in the Threads post does not show the pilot of that aircraft, and there is no credible evidence to indicate his name is “Jonathan Simpson.”

Delta had not publicly identified any of the flight's four crew members by the time the post was shared, and there are no credible media reports of the pilot's name. Delta spokesperson Morgan Durrant described the image in the Threads post as having "many hallmarks of AI generation and satire/gag" but declined further comment, citing the ongoing investigation.

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The claim originated in a Feb. 17 X post from an account with a bio that reads “all tweets parody/satire.” In a Jan. 27 post, that account used the same “Jonathan Simpson” name to identify a supposed border patrol agent who bears a strong resemblance to the man shown in the Feb. 17 post. That man appears to be adult film actor Johnny Sins, who is frequently depicted in memes as the holder of various occupations. Sins' X account reposted the pilot image Feb. 18 along with a laughing emoji and text that reads, “who believes this?!"

The image of the supposed pilot in the Threads post is an AI-generated fabrication, according to an expert and to the online detection tool Hive Moderation, which found it 99.5% likely to have been produced with AI.

Walter Scheirer, an engineering professor at the University of Notre Dame whose area of research includes visual recognition, said the image contains several hallmarks of an AI-generated image. First, the lower-right corner contains a watermark for Grok, X's generative AI chatbot. Additionally, the purported pilot’s uniform does not match those worn by actual Delta pilots. They wear wings and their name tags on the left side of their chests, not a company logo containing an extra “D” that Scheirer described as “likely an artifact from the algorithm.”

The Threads post is an example of what could be called "stolen satire," in which posts created as satire and originally presented that way are reposted in a way that makes them appear to be legitimate news. As a result, readers of the second-generation post are misled, as was the case here.

Paste BN reached out to several social media users who shared the image but did not immediately receive any responses.

Lead Stories also debunked the claim.

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