In the days after federal immigration agents fatally shot 37-year-old Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, online users shared an image (archived) allegedly showing Pretti assisting two disabled veterans — both double amputees with missing legs — during a physical therapy session with parallel bars.
Snopes readers emailed to ask whether the image depicted a genuine photo. For example, one reader sent in the image with the question, "Is this image of Alex Pretti assisting veterans AI?" Another user inquired, "Is the photo of Alex Pretti helping two veterans with amputations to walk real or fake?"
A reverse-image search for the image located numerous posts featuring the alleged photo on Bluesky (archived), Facebook (archived), Instagram (archived), Reddit (archived), Threads (archived) and X (archived), for example.
(The Lincoln Project/Bluesky)
In short, the image was fake and someone created it with an artificial intelligence (AI) tool. The image displayed several signs of generative AI, and Google Gemini's SynthID Detector tool also found a digital watermark indicating someone used a Google AI tool for at least part of the image's creation. As a result, we've rated the image fake.
The inauthentic image of Pretti, who worked as an intensive care nurse caring for critically ill veterans for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), circulated in the days after his death on Jan. 24.
Searches of Bing, DuckDuckGo, Google and Yahoo uncovered no information about Pretti helping veterans with physical therapy on parallel bars, as the image depicted. Similar searches also failed to locate any news media outlets reporting about or confirming the authenticity of the image, which would be newsworthy if real.
Some of the same users also shared a video from December 2024 showing Pretti reading a final salute for a veteran in a VA hospital. While we have not independently authenticated that video, multiple reputable outlets reported it genuinely showed Pretti at his job.
Signs of AI in image of Pretti with amputees
A Facebook post (archived) with one of the earliest posting dates we found featured an image originally displaying 11 red and white stripes on the U.S. flag. The U.S. flag contains 13 stripes, not 11. Some users' posts, linked earlier in this article, shared cropped versions of the image that made it difficult to notice the missing stripes.
(Timothy Cross/Facebook)
The man on the left side of the image only displayed one prosthetic leg, which could have been either an intentional choice or mistake — it's possible the AI tool mistook a vertical leg of the parallel bars as the man's other leg.
A prompt with the Google Gemini AI tool SynthID Detector scanned the image and successfully located a SynthID watermark — a hidden label Google adds to images made or manipulated with its AI platforms. Gemini answered the prompt, in part, "Based on a digital watermark check, part of this image was edited or generated with Google AI."
The AI-detection websites HiveModeration.com and WasItAI.com determined a user likely generated the image with AI, while Sightengine.com and AIOrNot.com either determined the image was likely real or likely not AI-generated. These inconsistent results reflected the poor reliability of AI-detection tools in early 2026.
For further reading, we previously investigated numerous claims regarding Pretti, including whether he was fired from his nursing job due to misconduct allegations.