Image of Bad Bunny in a dress and burning the U.S. flag is AI-generated

Puerto Rican superstar Bad Bunny ended his historic Super Bowl LX halftime show with a message of unity.

"God Bless America," he said as he drew the first predominantly Spanish-language Super Bowl halftime performance to a close, trailed by flags representing the many countries of the Americas.

But on social media, people claimed Bad Bunny, born Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, had been pictured in a more divisive moment: standing on a stage in a dress and makeup and burning a U.S. flag.

"Just a reminder: This is the man that the NFL chose to be the performer for today's halftime show at the Superbowl," one Feb. 8 Facebook post read.

This image doesn’t show a real flag-burning incident; it’s AI-generated.

(Screenshot from Facebook)

Gemini, Google’s AI chatbot, detected the digital watermark in the image that indicates it was made with the tool. The watermark is embedded directly into AI creations and is not visible to humans, but can be detected by Google’s technology. In an AI-generated image, that watermark is embedded in its pixels. 

The image has irregularities. The real U.S. flag has 13 stripes, while the flag in the fake image has 11. 

The AI-generated image also showed audience members holding cellphones and recording the event, but the pictures on phone screens showed inconsistent silhouettes of the burning flag.

PolitiFact found no news reports nor other images and videos that confirm such an incident happened. Such an event would be widely shared given Bad Bunny’s fame — he recently made history by becoming the first artist with a Spanish-language album to win the Grammy Awards Album of the Year prize.

Bad Bunny has worn a dress and a skirt for photoshoots before, but there’s no proof he wore a dress like the one in the fake image.

Lead Stories reported that the image first appeared on a satirical Facebook account named "Qbanguy." The account’s bio reads: "Ai funny Content & Master Meme Maker - 100% Not Real everything is Satire."

The account posted other fake images, including one of Bad Bunny in a multicolored dress holding a torn banner that reads "ICE Out," and one of Bad Bunny wearing a multicolored outfit with a vest that read "F*ck ICE." The account claimed these were his halftime show outfits, but he wore all-white outfits for the duration of his Super Bowl performance.

This is not a real image of Bad Bunny burning the U.S. flag. We rate that claim Pants on Fire!