'Photo tells the story': Democrat senator uses fake image of Pretti shooting featuring headless agent

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Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin (D) gave a speech Wednesday on the Senate floor expressing both his intention to help starve the Department of Homeland Security of funds and his outrage over anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement agitator Alex Pretti's fatal shooting on Saturday by a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agent.

When discussing Pretti's demise, Durbin relied on a large visual aid — a supposed photograph of the incident.

However the Democratic senator appears to have overlooked glaring indications that the image was significantly doctored. For starters, one of the federal agents depicted in the image appears to be missing his head.

'AI enhancement tends to hallucinate details.'

"I'm going to show a photo of that scene, which is graphic, but I'm afraid is necessary to appreciate the horror of the moment," Durbin said as he set the image for all to see on an easel. "This photo shows the last second before the ICE agent killed Alex Pretti on the streets of Minneapolis."

After citing the image as evidence that it was "obvious" Pretti had made "no effort to resist" — a claim contradicted by footage taken from multiple vantages — and emphasizing that "the photo tells the story," Durbin criticized the Trump administration for encouraging skepticism about the initial narrative surrounding the shooting.

"What was the Trump administration's immediate response when they heard of this second killing in Minneapolis? Not to bring down the temperature but instead to rush to the American people with one message: 'Don't believe your eyes. Don't believe what you see,'" said Durbin, pointing at the image, which is apparently an AI interpretation of a blurry still from footage taken of the incident.

Photo by Octavio JONES / AFP via Getty Images

There are numerous other signs of AI "hallucinations" in the image used by Durbin besides the absence of one agent's head.

There are, for instance, confusing shadows; a seemingly impossible configuration of fingers on Pretti's right hand; an unnatural bend in one of the legs of the headless agent kneeling next to Pretti; and a fantastical weapon in the possession of the agent depicted behind Pretti.

Hany Farid, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley's School of Information, told the Agence France Press, "The issue with these images is that the AI enhancement tends to hallucinate details."

According to IBM, "AI hallucination is a phenomenon where, in a large language model (LLM) often a generative AI chatbot or computer vision tool, perceives patterns or objects that are nonexistent or imperceptible to human observers, creating outputs that are nonsensical or altogether inaccurate."

Peter Adams, senior vice president of research and design at the News Literacy Project, told the Minnesota Star Tribune that such AI-generated images "are an example of how synthetic visuals can spread confusion and further divide Americans about important issues."

Durbin was evidently not the only liberal duped by the image.

In fact, it went viral on multiple social media platforms, including X, where it netted tens of millions of impressions and was shared widely. Even retired Gen. Raymond Thomas III, the former commander of U.S. Special Operations Command, and MSNBC legal analyst Jill Wine-Banks appear to have been fooled by it.