AI Image Scandal Hits Oregon Democrats and County Chair Candidate as OJP Retracts ‘Deepfake’ Story

Oregon — The Oregon Journalism Project has retracted its report calling a video of Washington County Commissioner Nafisa Fai a deepfake, acknowledging that an American flag behind her at a Minneapolis event was, in fact, upside down.

Additional reporting by KATU strengthens the evidence that the inverted flag was part of the actual scene. The station found cached photographs showing multiple speakers with the same backdrop and an archived thumbnail of Fai’s speech. Asked about the conflicting images, Fai denied that she or her team produced or approved the material.

The reversal undermines the factual premise of statements by Oregon Democrats and Democratic elected officials who denounced the footage as a racist fabrication. The Democratic Party of Oregon’s post has since been deleted. It also redirects scrutiny toward the competing material used to defend Fai: an image showing the flag upright that tested positive for an OpenAI-origin watermark, and a video that OJP now says came from a campaign supporter.

In its October 20 retraction, OJP said the disputed footage showed an October 10 event in Minneapolis. The publication interviewed Fai on October 16, after which a campaign supporter supplied another video showing the flag upright.

After readers questioned the conflicting images, OJP obtained additional images confirming the inverted display and withdrew its October 19 story. Its note does not identify the supporter or explain how the competing video was authenticated before publication.

According to KATU’s investigation, cached Google images showed Fai and other speakers at the same podium with the flag upside down. Those images linked to deleted material on Somali TV Minnesota’s Facebook page. An archive tool also recovered a thumbnail from a deleted YouTube video showing Fai with the inverted flag.

KATU identified discrepancies involving the flag and broadcast banner in the image published by OJP. The station reported that its questions to Fai’s campaign went unanswered by its deadline, then approached her after Tuesday’s county commission meeting.

“Everything my team and I received is everything that’s been circulating online. We didn’t produce or approve anything,” Fai told KATU.

The station reported that Fai offered no further comment. It also recounted her earlier statement to OJP that she did not remember specifically checking the flag before speaking and would not display it that way herself. Her denial leaves unresolved who supplied the competing material, how it was created and what verification preceded its publication.

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Right Now Oregon reached out to Fai’s campaign with a request for comment on any knowledge and involvement in the production of the altered image but the campaign has not responded.

OJP’s original account had become the foundation for political statements presenting manipulation as an established fact.

In the now-deleted Oregon Democrats post, preserved in a screenshot and previously retrieved post data, the party declared:

“The racist deepfake video of Washington County Commissioner Nafisa Fai circulating on social media is abhorrent.”

The party then called for AI regulation to prevent harm from misinformation. Its post linked to OJP’s article, with a preview showing the upright flag.

X’s public post data subsequently reported that the author deleted the post. That establishes its removal, but not the precise deletion time or the party’s reason.

Rep. Maxine Dexter similarly characterized the episode in an October 20 post:

“This is a racist, disgusting attack and yet another example of how misleading and malignant AI deepfakes can be.”

Dexter praised Fai and called for regulation. A publicly accessible preview of state Rep. Dacia Grayber’s Facebook statement likewise described the video as a deepfake and attributed it to unchecked AI and social-media algorithms.

Those statements combined two separate judgments: whether the imagery was fabricated and whether attacks on Fai were racist. OJP’s retraction contradicts the claim that the upside-down flag was fabricated. It does not, by itself, settle whether particular commentary directed at Fai was racist.

The image evidence presents a further problem for the original defense.

During verification work underlying this story, Right Now Oregon tested the upright-flag image published by OJP by submitting it to OpenAI’s Verify tool. The result reported “Generated with OpenAI tools” and detected a SynthID watermark originating from OpenAI.

An inverted-flag screenshot and a frame extracted from the circulating video returned “No OpenAI signals detected.”

A positive watermark result supports OpenAI involvement in the tested file, but does not identify its creator, or establish when it was edited, questions that Fai’s campaign has not responded to, though in statements Fai has denied any knowledge or involvement.

Visual comparison also raised concerns about discontinuities around the flag and the broadcast graphic near the bottom of the upright image. Those observations support the alteration hypothesis, while OJP’s retraction and KATU’s findings independently support the conclusion that the flag was upside down at the event.

Together, the findings establish that the upright image was unreliable evidence for dismissing the circulating footage. They do not establish that Fai personally altered it or knew it had been manipulated.

Fai is seeking the Washington County chair position in the November 3 election against fellow Commissioner Pam Treece. Her campaign website identifies her as a current commissioner and former commission vice chair, a Somali-born Oregon resident of nearly 30 years, and a former American Red Cross employee. Her platform emphasizes affordable housing, transportation improvements, mental-health response teams and county finances. Dexter is among the endorsers displayed on the website.

Oregon’s law on AI imagery in political communications

The competing image also raises a potential question under ORS 260.268, Oregon’s disclosure requirement for synthetic media in campaign communications.

The law covers certain realistic, digitally manipulated depictions of an individual that create a materially different impression from the original. Covered campaign communications must disclose the manipulation. Enforcement can include an injunction and a court-imposed civil penalty of up to $10,000; the section also contains exemptions.

Applying it here would require establishing that the particular distribution qualified as a campaign communication, that the alteration met the statutory definition and who bore responsibility. Whether changing a background flag satisfies the law’s focus on an individual’s appearance, speech or conduct would require legal analysis.

The statute’s media exemptions also have specific conditions. Publication by a newsroom does not automatically resolve the question, and no official determination of a violation has been made.

For OJP and the political figures who amplified its story, the immediate accountability issue is clearer. An allegation of fabrication was published as fact and repeated in public condemnations before additional evidence established that the disputed flag display was real.

Fai has now denied producing or approving the material. OJP has acknowledged its error. What remains unexplained is how the competing imagery reached the publication, who was responsible for it and why it was treated as sufficient evidence to declare the circulating video a deepfake.