CBS News head Bari Weiss at a conference in Idaho in July. (Brendan McDermid/Reuters)
A reporter at CBS News, chief Bari Weiss’s Free Press, drew ridicule over a viral, AI-altered photo of designer heels from Sen.-elect Abdul El-Sayed’s (D-MI) election night.
Olivia Reingold, a Free Press staff writer, acknowledged Thursday on X that she had run the image through ChatGPT. Her post came after Vanity Fair and a proposed Community Note on X flagged signs of AI.
Reingold posted the photo Tuesday night with a list of designer goods she said she spotted at El-Sayed’s election night event, including Valentino heels, a Chanel bag and Rolex watches. The post has drawn 3.2 million views.
Later that night, Reingold clarified that the party was for the entire Michigan Democratic Party, not just El-Sayed’s campaign.
Reingold says the edit changed nothing that matters, but the bag in her viral version differs from the one in her own photos.
“Hello, my name is Olivia Reingold, and I used ChatGPT to brighten and sharpen an image of a woman in Valentino shoes and a Chanel bag,” she wrote. “She is a real (and chic!) woman, really wearing those items. The observation holds.”
In the two photos she posted as her originals, the gold bag looks crinkled and uneven, with no clearly visible Chanel logo. In the viral version, the bag has neat diamond quilting and a crisp interlocking-C clasp.
Vanity Fair reported that the bag’s style did not match bags Chanel has sold and that the shoe straps had punched holes that authentic Valentino pumps lack. Google DeepMind’s SynthID detector found that “this media was made or edited with OpenAI,” the magazine said.
Several journalists said the real problem was that Reingold never disclosed the edit.
“AI image detectors confirmed that yes, Olivia Reingold used an AI-generated image to make her point, without a drop of disclosure,” Vanity Fair’s Julia Black wrote Thursday morning, about two hours before Reingold’s explanation.
“Trivial image aside, this is actually a serious journalistic ethical violation if true,” ProPublica editor Jesse Eisinger posted, calling on The Free Press and Reingold to address it.
“Well, she admitted it,” podcast host Alex Goldman shot back after Reingold’s post. “Absolutely disqualifying lack of disclosure and dishonesty.”
Other critics tied the photo to El-Sayed’s faith and to Reingold’s reporting on Israel.
“Bari Weiss’ minions handling the decisive rejection of their Israel-loyal, anti-Muslim fervor about as well as you would expect,” journalist Glenn Greenwald wrote Tuesday night.
El-Sayed, who will be the nation’s first Muslim senator, was the target of anti-Muslim rhetoric from President Donald Trump, the Associated Press reported.
Trump called him a “jihadist” at an Oct. 25 rally, and Republicans tried to tie El-Sayed to the Muslim Brotherhood. The AP found no evidence of any such link, and El-Sayed has denied ties to extremist groups.
“Same ‘reporter’ who wrote about Palestinian children starved by Israel without even trying to contact a single one of them or their families,” Drop Site News co-founder Ryan Grim posted Thursday.
The Free Press, which reported in 2025 that 12 people in viral Gaza starvation photos had other health problems, has called critics of that story “journalists who oppose actual journalism,” Drop Site reported.
“BREAKING NEWS: Journalist learns that people from the Middle East dress up for important events,” actor and writer Nazanin Nour joked Thursday.
“You can tell Olivia has never met an Arab American in her life,” writer Tariq Kenney-Shawa posted Tuesday night.
In September, Jacobin profiled Reingold under the headline “Bari Weiss’s Most Loyal Soldier,” calling her “a younger version of Weiss.”
Weiss, who founded The Free Press before becoming editor-in-chief of CBS News, had pushed the network’s reporters to pursue El-Sayed’s supposed sympathy toward the Muslim Brotherhood, Semafor reported last month.
“Actual journalists don’t do this,” Toronto Star columnist Bruce Arthur wrote Thursday. “Actual journalists should never do this.”
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