Sheriff's Office posts AI-generated picture after arrest, takes it down

On Thursday, the Yakima County Sheriff's Office arrested a volunteer youth pastor for multiple counts relating to child molestation.

Sheriff Robert Udell was not directly involved in the case or the arrest, as he was out of his office on Thursday, but he did say the following about these cases.

“The victim in these cases always has to tell somebody. Sometimes they don’t, but then we rely on the person they tell to wave the flag and say, 'hey, my friend says she was victimized,'" Udell said. "That’s where often the investigation will go. We sometimes have victims that are able to stand up for themselves, but it’s hard. They’re very very traumatic crimes.”

The sheriff’s office announced the case on social media once it became public, and on Facebook they attached a photograph. The picture features two people who appear to be a part of the sheriff’s department taking someone into custody, and on the bottom it says that it was AI generated. The picture got a very negative reaction in the comments section, and has since been taken out of the post.

A KIMA reporter asked Udell about the reasoning behind the ai picture, and here is how he responded.

“I don’t know. He might have thought ‘it’s a good idea let’s see what happens.' I don’t know. He tried it, obviously. I heard there was a little bit of pushback on that," Udell said. "It was different because I looked at it and I thought, ‘I don’t recognize anybody in that photo,' and then you realize that it was an ai picture.” 23

The Sheriff Department’s Facebook page took it down, and they posted the following in the comments:

@followers The story is real. The photo is AI-generated. Not a real photo. Trying something new. Very mixed reactions.