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.
So they posted a photo on social media of themselves wearing Lake America shirts. It was either:
A) An absurdist joke poking fun at the renaming, as they said it was
B) A political statement that they would like the lake to be called “Lake America”
C) A political statement that USA should annex CanadaC is kinda a stretch. A and B are not a big deal. I don’t see why people are so happy about this person being fired. It seems like something totally reasonable to post, though maybe in poor taste if you believe interpretation B.
Not really a big deal
Yeah I don’t see how this is a sackable offense
For those who want to see the image without allowing 20 javascripts to run:
Possibly pattern-seeking behavior but if you squint, those waves look an awful lot like the nazi eagle, which just adds to this whole thing
Yeah that’s a huge reach. I don’t think the AI image thing would do that without specific prompting.
Do we know what the prompt said and that it didn’t include that?
No but my guess is it was “put us in lake america sweatshirts” or something. “Put us in lake america sweatshirts with little squiggles that look vaguely like a Nazi eagle if you squint and tilt your head just right” seems unlikely. If they wanted Nazi imagery they would have just put it right there, because openly being a Nazi is acceptable now, apparently.
Whatever model they used is unlikely to associate “lake america” and “Nazi eagle graphic”, so I doubt the AI would have done this silently. (Maybe if it was grok. Elon has his thumb on that scale.)
Is there any way in hell AI would get all of that text, and those symbols correct? You can be 135% sure she doesn’t know how to do touchups. I seriously doubt that’s AI.
And what, she was getting death threats from Canadians from the photo going viral? She’s that famous and recognizable? Bullshit. Real shirts, really being worn in real life.
Yes, the current models are much more capable than the previous ones. They don’t create nearly as much body horror or text gibberish.
When your employees tell you who they are, listen.
Stupid enough to offend 70% of your customers.
And good for the credit union, they did.
Now she’s unemployed.
I always have had mixed feelings on stuff like this. On one hand fuck her. On the other I don’t want my job to have any say in what I do in my off hours. If it’s not a crime they should have no say and not be able to take any employment actions against me.
This case it works out, but it’s not a precedent, or perhaps fact, of working life that I enjoy
Like others have said, CEO is different. Tax/legal wise there is a set of positions with the company that are defined, and registered with the government. They are empowered to act for the company in ways regular employees are not. I think the line to draw is between them and the rest. If a person is a federally registered representative of the company, then all behaviour outside the office matters. I also think they should bear legal responsibility for the crimes of the company as well. But we know that won’t happen.
Except this isn’t a CEO only occurance. Remember all the people that got fired for celebrating Charlie Kirk’s death? Same principal
No, I don’t really remember anyone being fired for that. Especially not any CEOs.
