Is a viral image showing Bad Bunny burning a flag while preparing for the Super Bowl halftime show real? No, that's not true: The image, featuring the singer wearing a white, blue and pink striped dress and lighting an American flag on fire using a lighter, first appeared on a Facebook account that says it publishes satire. It also contained a SynthID watermark, indicating it had been generated using artificial intelligence.
The image appeared in a Facebook post (archived here) where it was published on February 8, 2026 with a comment that read:
Bad Bunny caught on stage last night preparing for his SuperBowl Halftime show, are you excited about his performance, he's the biggest artist in the world, and he does NOT support ICE, and thinks America is going backwards. I guess much like most celebrities.
This is what the image in the post looked like on Facebook at the time of writing:
(Source: Facebook screenshot taken on Sun Feb 8 14:37:34 2026 UTC)
Qbanguy, the Facebook account that posted the image (archived here) has a bio that says:
Ai funny Content & Master Meme Maker -
100% Not Real everything is Satire 😆
Additionally, Lead Stories uploaded the image to Google's Gemini (conversation archived here) which used the watermarking tool SynthID (archived here) ("A tool to watermark and identify content generated through AI") to determine the image was edited or generated with Google's own AI tools:
Gemini said:
This image is not a real photo; it was created or heavily edited using AI.
Specific digital watermarking (SynthID) was detected in the file, which indicates that most or all of the image was generated or edited with Google AI.
Additionally, a visual analysis reveals several common AI artifacts that point to it being fake:
Distorted details: If you look closely at the hands of the person in the center and the audience members, the fingers appear unnatural and blended together.
Inconsistent text and screens: The images on the smartphones in the foreground do not accurately reflect the scene they are supposedly recording.
Lack of context: There are no credible news reports or official footage of the artist Bad Bunny performing in this specific outfit or engaging in this act.
For more information on how Google identifies AI-generated content, you can visit support.google.com/gemini?p=synthid.
Additionally, the flag in the picture only has six red stripes while the real article features seven (archived here).
