Rusted Qatari Plane Sitting On Blocks On White House Lawn (satire)

[highplainsdem]

5. Thanks!

My first thought when I saw it was that it might be AI slop, and you can see from the reply to The Onion's Bluesky post, which I'll put at the end of this reply, that I wasn't the only one who had that reaction.

The Onion caught a lot of flak early this year for using AI slop, and they removed what was caught then and apologized, blaming the lapse on the stock image platform they get some of their images from (images their art team will modify) for not being careful enough to keep AI out.

I'd been wondering if you might've found the image on a social media account posting a lot of AI art. Sometimes those accounts don't seem to stand for anything in particular. They just churn out AI slop for whatever is in the news, or the day's hashtag (like #caturday posts on Twitter, which have been flooded with AI cats from people whose own accounts don't show any real cats or posts talking about cats).

Since Onion CEO Ben Collins said they're relying on their team of artists, this rusting jet was probably photoshopped from two photos and then "rusted."

But you can see an AI version in this Bluesky post from Matt LeCroix.

— The Onion (@theonion.com) 2025-05-28T15:00:39.000Z

So The Onion is now posting AI prompts as headlines 😂

— Matt LeCroix (@mclecroix.bsky.social) 2025-05-28T15:28:27.040Z