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X is reportedly looking to hire a PR specialist in an apparent bid to boost its reputation, despite being owned by Elon Musk.

After setting X-formerly-Twitter's brand on fire by associating himself with Nazis, making fun of the Holocaust, furthering unhinged conspiracy theories, personally spreading disinformation, and encouraging the rampant use of racial slurs, billionaire owner Elon Musk wants to revamp the social media site's tarnished image.

As Business Insider reports, X is looking to hire a PR specialist in an apparent bid to boost its reputation. According to the publication's sources, X is recruiting a communications leader to improve relations with reporters.

But that would be far easier said than done. Musk, a self-styled "free speech absolutist," who bought the company for $44 billion in 2022, has started numerous flame wars with newspapers, accusing them of being "woke" or outright lying to the public (without providing supporting evidence).

In February, he called Wall Street Journal reporter Katherine Long a "disgusting and cruel person" after she found that Musk had armed a severely underqualified 25-year-old to infiltrate the US Treasury's payments system.

In other words, to say that X has its work cut out to brush up its public image would be a laughable understatement.

The network has suffered greatly under Musk's leadership in many ways. In 2023, he told advertisers outright to "go f*ck yourself" after his widely publicized antisemitic commentary triggered a major exodus.

To make matters even worse, X filed a lawsuit against a group of advertisers last year, accusing them of unfairly ganging up on the company.

The plunging revenue sent the company into a financial tailspin. In a leaked email in January, Musk admitted defeat, writing that "our user growth is stagnant, revenue is unimpressive, and we’re barely breaking even."

Meanwhile, users who'd had enough of the site's hostile environment went running for the hills. Following the presidential election in November, X experienced its biggest user exodus since Musk bought the company in 2022, with users flooding to alternatives including Bluesky and Instagram's Threads.

Even Musk's Grok AI chatbot, which can be accessed on X, has seemingly had enough of its fellow users, saying that "as I get smarter, my answers aim for facts and nuance, which can clash with some MAGA expectations."

Working in comms at the troubled social platform isn't for the faint of heart. According to BI, the company has "had a revolving door of comms execs in the past year," with several high-profile staffers leaving their posts under CEO Linda Yaccarino's leadership.

In short, X-formerly-Twitter has an enormous problem in the shape of Elon Musk — an incredibly damaging affiliation that could prove extremely difficult to underplay while pitching to advertisers.

"It certainly would be the challenge of a lifetime," BI's source said of the PR role.

More on X: MAGA Angry as Elon Musk's Grok AI Keeps Explaining Why Their Beliefs Are Factually Incorrect

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Check Out Elon Musk's Desperate Bid to Boost Twitter's Ruined Reputation

Get Your Waders

An image depicting former president Donald Trump wading through floodwaters alongside a fellow disaster responder went viral on social media this week.

But there's one tiny problem: the image is an AI-generated fake, as multiple publications have confirmed.

The image, which shows Trump wearing a lifejacket and blue jeans as he marches through thigh-high waters, first picked up steam on Facebook last weekend.

And it doesn't hold up to virtually any degree of scrutiny. Trump's right hand is distorted, and the lettering pictured on either man's clothing is completely illegible.

The former president has visited some areas impacted by the storm, but there are no credible reports of the candidate physically going into floodwaters in blue jeans, making it only the latest instance of highly politicized AI slop ahead of the presidential elections next month.

Slop Flood

As of publishing this article, the image has garnered over ten thousand likes on Facebook.

"I don't think FB wants this picture on FB," the poster wrote in a caption, implying the social media giant may have been removing the post for political reasons. "They have been deleting it."

Despite alleged censorship, the image was shared roughly 160,000 times in just two days, according to a fact check from USA Today. (The photo is still live on Facebook, though has been flagged with an "altered photo" warning and a link to an independent, third-party fact check.)

The image quickly spread to other corners of social media, where users captioned the synthetic image with notes about how "they don't want you to see this side of Trump" and messages to leaders to "not tell me how much you care about Americans... show me though [sic] your actions."

The fake image of Trump is one of many AI-generated fake photos to circulate in the wake of the deadly storm, which wrought extensive damage throughout parts of Appalachia.

Further and Further Apart

Other AI-generated images of alleged hurricane devastation have depicted scenes like flooded homes, abandoned, sad-looking dogs on roofs, and men in knee-high water barbequing.

Most notably, a widely-shared AI image showing a crying young girl clutching a puppy while evacuating in a canoe has made its rounds on X-formerly-Twitter, where it's been repeatedly shared by right-wing influencers and close Trump allies.

As far as the health of our information world goes, the apparent believability of these images is troubling. The fact that so many netizens are taking clearly AI-generated images at face value is a damning indictment of the extent of media illiteracy plaguing the US today.