The chief executive of a Michigan bank has lost her job after facing backlash for a social media photo of her family in sweatshirts that read “Lake America,” referencing Donald Trump’s relabeling of Lake Ontario.
Jane Smith from Family First Credit Union recently went viral after sharing the photo of her and three relatives wearing navy blue crewnecks with the words “Lake America” scrawled in white. The picture was snapped as her family left on September 11 for a 10-day trip to Halifax, Nova Scotia, but Smith says the sweatshirts were edited onto their bodies using AI.
“We weren’t trying to make a political statement,” Smith told Michigan outlet WJRT. “However, we were kind of poking fun at the fact that one of the Great Lakes’ names were getting changed.”
Family First Credit Union announced Wednesday that Smith was no longer with the company and that Jason Acosta, the chief operations officer, would serve as interim CEO.
There is another photo of the same group in normal clothes. So one photo has to be AI and probably it’s the one with the “Lake America” on it. That said, it hardly matters if the tops were real or not. Somebody thought it a great idea to create an AI photo and spread it around social media and found out how great an idea it was. The stupid part is they were going to Canada and the bank presumably has a lot of Canadian customers. And they do this? Fucking wild.
I do know they’re better, but for an entire group? They’re not totally perfect. It’s the same group in the same pose, and location? So then what about the death threats, they came home early because of? All just online?