JokersUpdates.com: Current Affairs - Education secretary used fake photo in post about Black history icon

https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2026/04/11/linda-mcmahon-fake-ida-b-wells-photo/

Linda McMahon’s Truth Social post about journalist Ida B. Wells is the latest problematic use of AI and other digitally created images by the Trump administration.

Education Secretary Linda McMahon lauded civil rights activist and journalist Ida B. Wells on Truth Social on Friday, part of a series of posts praising celebrated women in American history.

But the photo attached to the post wasn’t of Wells. It was an image of a woman at a desk, holding a quill pen. The image carried the label “Photo by Gemini,” a reference to a Google AI tool.

Critics decried the photo as historically inaccurate and unnecessarily fake.

The post is the latest in a string of AI creations and other digitally altered images shared by the Trump administration.

McMahon’s use of the fake image disappointed Paula Giddings, the author of a 2008 biography on Wells.

“While I appreciated the recognition of Ida B. Wells, the decision to use an AI generated image undermines the very values she stood for: truth-telling and her lifelong campaign against false representations,” Giddings, a historian who wrote “Ida: A Sword Among Lions,” said in an email to The Washington Post.

“To use a fabricated image — even a respectful one — is not only unnecessary but is evidence that the secretary of education misreads [Wells’s] legacy.”