Fact Check: Viral Image Claiming US Pilots’ Rescue In Iran Is AI-Generated
American pilot has been safely evacuated from Iran is AI-generated. It's worth noting that Iran shot down a US F-15E Strike Eagle fighter jet carrying a pilot and a weapons systems officer. The pilot was rescued shortly afterwards, but the weapons systems officer was missing and later safely evacuated from Iran.
- By: Abhishek Parashar
- Published: Apr 10, 2026 at 03:42 PM
New Delhi (Vishvas News). The US military has rescued a missing crew member of one of its fighter jets in Iran. In this context, a photo is going viral on social media, claiming this photo features a crew member of an American F-15E fighter jet who was safely evacuated from Iran.
Both crew members (pilot and weapon systems officer) of an F-15E fighter jet that was shot down in Iran were safely rescued in a high-risk rescue operation. The image going viral with this claim is AI-created, using Google AI. It is noteworthy that after the fighter jet crashed, US Special Forces carried out a daring mission to evacuate the injured weapons officer from Iran.
What is viral?
Social media user ‘July Gaytan’ shared the viral photo on April 6, 2026, with the caption, “Here is the photo of the U.S. airman being rescued yesterday in Iran”
You can see the archived link of the post here.
Many other users on different social media platforms have shared this photo in the same context.
Investigation
A US Air Force F-15E Strike Eagle aircraft was shot down in Iran, killing two crew members: the pilot and a weapons systems officer. The pilot was rescued initially, while the second crew member, injured, remained in hiding in Iran. The US launched a daring military operation to rescue him. Ultimately, the US also extracted this officer from Iran.
US President Donald Trump also confirmed the ‘daring and risky’ rescue operation that was carried out to save the fighter jet’s crew. Trump detailed the pilot’s rescue in a lengthy post on his social media platform, ‘Truth Social’, which was shared by the White House’s official X handle.
However, we did not find any photos of these two US Air Force officers in any of the reports, raising suspicion that the viral photo is AI-generated.
So we checked this image with Google’s ‘SynthID’ detector. SynthID analysis confirms this image was created by Google AI (confidence score: very high).
This analysis confirms the detection of SynthID throughout the image. SynthID is a tool for watermarking and identifying AI-generated content created by Google’s AI models.
For further confirmation, we tested it with another deepfake detection tool. Hive Moderation’s analysis also indicated a high probability (100%) of this image being created by Gemini.
Our investigation reveals that the viral image has been created using AI.
What is the context?
Recently, Iran shot down an American F-15E fighter jet. The plane was carrying two crew members, both of whom ejected. One of them has already been rescued by the US military.
According to a BBC Hindi report, “US President Donald Trump, while giving information about this operation on social media on Sunday morning, said that this rescue operation was one of the most daring search and rescue operations in the history of the US Army.”
According to the Iran Crisis Index on acleddata.com, “On February 28, 2026, the US and Israel launched military action against Iran. However, under Pakistani mediation, the US and Iran have agreed to a two-week ceasefire. Pakistani Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif announced this on his official X handle.”
The Facebook user who shared the viral photo has around 40000 followers.
Conclusion: The viral image claiming an American pilot has been safely evacuated from Iran is AI-generated. It’s worth noting that Iran shot down a US F-15E Strike Eagle fighter jet carrying a pilot and a weapons systems officer. The pilot was rescued shortly afterwards, but the weapons systems officer was missing and later safely evacuated from Iran.
- Claim Review : Photo of the American pilot who was safely evacuated from Iran.
- Claimed By : FB User-July Gaytan
- Fact Check : False
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