Defense Department Uses AI-Generated Images to Brag About Recruitment
The U.S. Defense Department is sharing AI-generated images of female soldiers to make it seem like the government’s recruitment efforts are actually working.
In a propaganda segment on One America News’s The Matt Gaetz Show Thursday, Defense Department press secretary Kingsley Wilson lauded the department’s “incredible success” in recruiting women.
“These numbers are fantastic. Under the previous administration we had about 16,000 female recruits last year. Now we’ve got upwards of 24,000,” Wilson said. While the Pentagon has not officially released these numbers, it gave the same ones to Fox News earlier this week.
The broadcast showed several “photographs” of strikingly beautiful and notably diverse female officers. But lo and behold, a Grok AI watermark was distinctly visible in the corner of each image, revealing that the military’s newest recruits were nothing but ghosts in the machine.
. @PressSecDOD "The Army, the Air Force, the Navy, EVERYONE IS HITTING THEIR (RECRUITING) METRICS EARLY!
— DOD Rapid Response (@DODResponse) August 14, 2025
It is a TESTAMENT to Secretary Hegseth and President Trump's LEADERSHIP!" pic.twitter.com/5YRzHi0FmA
A DOD spokesperson told CNN that they had not provided the phony images. Later, during Thursday evening’s show, Gaetz apologized for showing AI-generated images. “The DOD didn’t give us these images; Grok did. And we’ll use better judgment going forward,” he said.
But the DOD doesn’t seem to care either way. The clip—and the fake photographs—were shared by the Department of Defense Rapid Response account on X, touting the military’s success in hitting its recruitment goals early. The Army also said that it met its yearly recruitment goal of 61,000 new soldiers in June, but recruitment numbers were reportedly rising even before Donald Trump’s reelection. That didn’t stop Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth from claiming a so-called “Trump Bump.”
One might recall just several months ago when Hegseth specifically said that women were not fit for combat roles. “It hasn’t made us more effective. Hasn’t made us more lethal. Has made fighting more complicated,” he explained. “Our institutions don’t have to incentivize that in places where traditionally—not traditionally, over history—men in those positions are more capable.”
Now his agency is desperate to welcome female service members—or, at least, make it look like it does.