Spokane, Washington, Police Reportedly Circulated Purported AI-Generated Image as Authentic Photo of Injured Dog
Detectives in Spokane, Washington, reportedly created a purported AI-generated image as a joke depicting a real undercover officer holding an injured dachshund. A supervisor reportedly mistook it for an authentic photograph and the image was released to news media after correcting an earlier claim that the dog had died. The Spokesman-Review published a cropped version before the department disclosed that the scene was fabricated and began reviewing its verification procedures.
- Date it happened
- 2026-07-01
- Organisation involved
- Spokane Police Department, Law enforcement, Synthetic media creators
- Product, system or model
- Synthetic media generation technology, Synthetic image generation technology
This incident was imported from AI Incident Database and is used under CC BY-SA 4.0. Our additions to it — the structured fields, the translation, the checks against other reports — are published under the same licence.
This is a record of what was reported, not a finding that anyone broke the law. If it names your organisation and you believe it is wrong, the corrections process is free and open to everyone.