A picture of Alex Pretti that was apparently AI-altered to make him look more clean-cut has been widely circulating among protesters, and even some news outlets in the wake of his killing by Border Patrol agents.

Pretti, a 37-year-old armed ICU nurse, was gunned down by two federal agents in Minneapolis on Jan. 24 while a larger swarm of other officers were subduing him.

The Service Employees International Union, of which Pretti was a member, first shared a snapshot of his staff photo at the VA hospital where he worked in Minneapolis on Monday.

Headshot of Alex Pretti, RN, smiling in blue scrubs with an American flag in the background.
The original staff portrait of Alex Pretti displayed at the VA hospital he worked at in Minneapolis.

A smiling man with a beard and glasses in blue scrubs stands in front of an American flag.
The same portrait altered by artificial intelligence.Facebook / Fight for a Union
That same day, protesters and media outlets latched onto a cleaner version of the portrait that was tweaked by AI and propped it up as their representation of choice in their coverage.

The edited picture boosted the saturation and made Pretti appear a few shades more tan than he actually was. It reshaped virtually every aspect of his face, including the angle of his jaw, the bend of his nose, and his hairline.

Some speculated that whoever altered the picture to begin with was trying to make Pretti look more “pretty” so he could seem like a more appealing “poster boy” for the anti-ICE movement.

Another viral photo that fooled many showed an agent holding a gun to the back of Pretti’s head execution-style while he tried to push himself up off the concrete — though one of the agents in that pic didn’t have a head, a telltale sign it was fake.

US Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) displayed the blown-up picture, which he believed to be a real account from the shooting, on the Senate floor while “[demanding] the Trump Administration take accountability for its actions,” according to a post on his X account.

Four men standing on a sidewalk in winter, one holding a phone up.
Pretti was fatally shot by two Border Patrol agents on Saturday.AP
“I’m going to show a photo of that scene, which is graphic, but I’m afraid it’s necessary to appreciate the horror of the moment,” Durbin warned before he revealed the doctored image.

Federal authorities allege that Pretti “violently resisted” when the officers were disarming him, but videos of his final moments only show him holding his phone while he struggled beneath a dogpile of agents.

One officer sprayed a chemical irritant in Pretti’s face before forcing him to the ground. Horrified bystanders begged the officers to stop their assault before two fatally shot Pretti, sparking a chain reaction of gunfire.

Collage of the New York Post newspaper front page with the headline "NOT AGAIN," showing a photo of uniformed individuals in a chaotic scene, and an inset photo of a man named Alex Jeffrey Pretti, with accompanying articles about federal agents killing an armed protester, Governor Walz calling in the Guard, and Trump's comments on an 'insurrection'.
Pretti is the second protester who was fatally shot by federal authorities in the last month.
The Border Patrol agents involved in the shooting have since been placed on administrative leave. White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller reluctantly admitted that the officers “may not have been following” proper protocol when they killed Pretti.

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Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old mother and poet, was also shot and killed during a whirlwind confrontation with ICE agents near her home in Minneapolis on Jan. 7.

Border Patrol chief Greg Bovino and some agents were ordered to pull out of Minneapolis in the wake of Pretti’s murder. The order does not extend to ICE and it does not include all Border Patrol agents.