05/04/2026
History is being told by the generators.
Recently, a 'never before seen' historical photo of the Nez Perce tribe has been making the rounds in Appaloosa breed circles, to much excitement by fans of the breed and its history.
We are sorry to say that this image is AI Generated, as are many fake 'historical' photos these days. While dedicated breed historians are quick to call these things out, people less immersed in the history can be easily farmed by these bad actors looking to turn your views, and shares, into bank.
So, here's what you can do to make sure you aren't platforming these miserable poots in the future. Remember, these people DON'T care about history, the only thing they care about is MAKING BANK, and the fact they have targeted our breed so often is because they have decided that Appaloosa people are out of touch and EASY TO FOOL!
First up is the common sense route. Ask yourself, when you see a 'never before seen' historical image, WHY you have never seen it before? What is the source for the image? If it's the Smithsonian or a similarly prestigious entity, you're probably safe. If it's a dorky page on social media that makes thousands of posts of similarly 'never before seen' historical photos... that's just some guy overseas farming you for pennies and using whatever subjects he thinks will go viral as a lot of gullible people share his content around.
In the case of this photo, you can ask yourself, 'Would the a band of the Nez Perce have stopped, mid-flight from the US Army, to pose with all of their horses, babies, and women, for a nice group photo?' The answer to that is obviously 'no'.
Then, you can look at the photo itself. Those horses are largely out of proportion, there's a laundry basket, faces are melting, heads are floating, horses are merging into each other Color Out Of Space style. Sure, 1800s tin types are not going to have the clarity of modern photos, but they are not going to look like that.
Finally, you can check with Google/Gemini for a SynthID. Now, this will ONLY work with Gemini and ONLY on images that were created using a google ai generation tool. Other AIs, such as Grok or ChatGPT, may misidentify the image as real despite Google confirming the presence of their own embedded AI watermark. If the image was generated using another service, Google won't be able to identify it, so this option is going to be hit or miss. But, a positive Synth ID as AI in this instance is pretty infallible.
Remember, Grok can't even tell the identity of someone in makeup. So don't trust it with like... facts.
These images are harmful to actual history, especially when people take them as 100% fact. Remember, there are a FINITE number of real photos from the 1800s, and the number of never-before-seen ones actually lessens with each passing year, it doesn't increase. A photo like this coming to light would be NEWS, and not just from a page posting engagement bait.
Don't let people who don't even care about YOUR history change it, just because they think you're foolish enough to believe it at face value. All you are to these people is an easy mark, and they will post whatever it takes to get to engage.
