The White House published an image on X in which the face of a protester had been altered using AI to depict her weeping during her arrest — instead of striking a stoic pose, as she actually looked during the event.
The woman in the image, civil rights attorney and organizer Nekima Levy Armstrong, was arrested this week after interrupting a church service in St. Paul, Minnesota. The protesters were calling for the resignation of a pastor at the church, whom they say is the acting director of an Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) field office in St. Paul, Minnesota. Levy Armstrong and other protesters are now being charged with federal conspiracy and intimidation charges, according to the Department of Homeland Security. Trump Administration officials have repeatedly characterized the protest as a “riot” and an attack on Christian worshipers; speaking to CNN on Wednesday before her arrest, Levy Armstrong defended the action as a “peaceful nonviolent demonstration.”
On Thursday, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem published a photo on X of Levy Armstrong’s arrest. Levy Armstrong appears to be handcuffed as she was escorted through an office space by a federal agent. In this image, Levy Armstrong isn’t crying. She’s also wearing bright pink lipstick, and her mouth is closed.
Roughly 30 minutes later, things got decidedly more bizarre when the official White House X account also published an image on X purportedly depicting Levy Armstrong’s arrest. But in this version of the photo, Levy Armstrong is pictured sobbing, with visible tears streaming down her cheeks and her mouth open. Her pink lipstick, notably, is gone.
“ARRESTED,” reads large, bolded text, inserted over the image of Levy Armstrong allegedly sobbing. “FAR LEFT AGITATOR NEKIMA LEVY ARMSTRONG FOR ORCHESTRATING CHURCH RIOTS IN MINNESOTA.”
Everything else about the image, however, is the same, including the positioning of Levy Armstrong’s body, the agent, and the background.
As CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale soon confirmed, the image had been altered to make it look as though Levy Armstrong was crying during her arrest.
Journalists and lawyers, among others, were quick to point out the discrepancy, taking to social media to show the stark difference between the two images.
Futurism contacted both the White House and the Department of Homeland Security to ask whether generative AI was used to alter the image, but hasn’t immediately received a reply.
According to Dale, when reached for comment, the White House responded with a link to a post from an administration spokesperson reading: “Enforcement of the law will continue. The memes will continue.”
In its initial post, however, the White House made no attempt to clarify that the photo had been altered, nor did its presentation suggest in any way that it wasn’t real. It was presented as exactly that: a photo. In this context, to categorize this action — the undisclosed and unflattering altering of a photo of the arrest of an American citizen who has been charged with a federal crime but not yet tried or convicted in court, published on an official White House information channel — as a “meme” is, at best, disingenuous. At worst, it’s a revisionist lie intended to influence public opinion and the information ecosystem.
To that end, it’s unclear why the White House would feel the need to alter an arrest photo in this way, other than to portray a different reality of Levy Armstrong’s detainment — that is, if the reality of the photo published by Noem didn’t suit the administration and its aims.
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