White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt posted a photo to X on Wednesday from the new Air Force One, a plane gifted to President Donald Trump from the government of Qatar, despite anti-bribery rules intended to stop that kind of transaction.
Blatant corruption aside, users on social media noticed something weird in the background of the photos of the newly refurbished plane.
What a privilege to be aboard the inaugural flight on the brand new Air Force One! A truly unforgettable day. ✈️🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/0vGswnULwK
— Karoline Leavitt (@karolineleavitt) July 2, 2026
Take a close look at the books behind Leavitt. They might be difficult to see, so we’ve blown up part of the image below.
It’s a bit pixelated since we’ve enlarged the photo. But, yes, that really says “Library” on the spines of several books.
Or take a look at this one:
Who doesn’t love that classic book title, “Arts?” Such a great novel.
How about the books on the other side of the shelf?
Yes, that says “Architecture” several times. They appear to be completely fake books with generic titles on the outside.
Many people wondered whether the image was AI-generated. The short answer: It’s complicated. Gizmodo ran the image through Google’s Gemini AI chatbot, which can check whether it has the SynthID watermark. That watermark was developed by Google and is invisible to the naked eye, but tells you whether it was made using Google’s AI image generation tools. It wasn’t.
However, it doesn’t tell you whether it was made using other AI image generators, meaning there is a possibility this image was created using AI. We don’t think it was, however, since there’s very little reason to do that in this case. The more likely explanation is that Air Force One now has fake books with terrible, generic titles.
There are plenty of reasons to remain skeptical when it comes to images released by the Trump administration, however. Trump himself posted an image to Truth Social on June 29 that appeared to show a large golden eagle strapped to the White House.
“A Golden Gift to the White House for its 250th Birthday Year!” Trump wrote.
"A Golden Gift to the White House for its 250th Birthday Year!" – President Donald J. Trump 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/XV2sk6smcf
— The White House (@WhiteHouse) June 30, 2026
But the if you run the image through Gemini, it comes back as AI generated. It’s unclear what Trump was trying to communicate with the fake image. As CNN notes, a freelance photographer took photos of the White House that day which show the eagle isn’t there.
Trump took the new Air Force One to North Dakota on Wednesday for the grand opening of the new Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library. Trump cut the ribbon, gave a weird speech, and also talked with an AI version of Teddy. When Trump asked about the Panama Canal, a particular fixation of the late imperial-minded president, the fake Roosevelt acknowledged building it was an accomplishment, but that he was more proud of other domestic achievements.
Trump is arguably the fakest president we’ve ever had, with his tacky decorations in the Oval Office and his constant stream of lies. And while the AI image of an eagle isn’t real, there’s currently no evidence Leavitt’s photo is AI generated. So, we’re going to go with the assumption that those books are real. Well, they’re fake. But you get the idea. They’re fake books that exist in the real world.
