Is this the pilot from the Delta Air Lines crash? No, it’s an AI-generated image of a porn star

After a Delta Air Lines plane crashed and flipped upside down at Toronto Pearson International Airport Feb. 17, some social media users incorrectly identified the pilot.

"This is Jonathan Simpson, the pilot of today’s Delta Crash in Toronto, Canada," a Feb. 18 Threads post said. The post included a photo of a pilot in a Delta uniform.

Screenshot from Threads

This post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and Threads.)

But the photo is artificially generated and shows the likeness of an adult film star, not the pilot of the crash. No pilots or flight crew members have been identified as of Feb. 20.

The earliest version of the post we found was on Feb. 17 by an X user with a disclaimer that the account exclusively posts parody and satire. The same photo in that post contains a Grok watermark, which means it was created by Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup xAI. The photo has other signs it was AI-generated, including an extra "D" in the logo of the pilot’s uniform.

The person in the manipulated photo is Johnny Sins, an adult film star who is a frequent target of online hoaxes. Sins responded to the post Feb. 18  with a laughing emoji and asked, "Who believes this?!"

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The post also included a photo of Sins in a U.S. Army uniform that was featured on the jumbotron as a prank during a 2022 Minnesota Vikings football game.

Another AI-generated image in the Threads post showed the overturned plane tilted up to the sky. Earlier versions of that image also contained a Grok watermark.

We rate the claim that this photo shows Delta pilot "Jonathan Simpson" Pants on Fire!