The Saline County sheriff’s office issued a statement on social media Monday after an image altered by AI in a post on Facebook drew a critical response last week.
On July 28, the sheriff’s office shared details from a traffic stop in a social media post. Deputies stopped a vehicle operating without insurance and seized more than 2,800 grams of marijuana, 36 grams of ecstasy pills, around $3,000 and additional drug paraphernalia, the post said.
The post included a photo of the confiscated items spread out on a table with two deputies standing nearby.
Viewers of the post noticed an “AI content” label, and some commenters questioned the authenticity of items in the image.
“Why use AI?” one commenter said. “If you look at the items, the money is off, the gun is off, the drugs are off.”
The sheriff’s office posted a response on Facebook Monday afternoon and confirmed AI had been used to alter the image, but said all changes were to the image’s background.
“Yes, AI was used to clean up the background of the photo because it was taken in our patrol room,” the post said. “It was only used as a tool to clean up the background and was not intended for anything else.”
Monday’s post included the unaltered photo, which showed stacks of cardboard boxes and paper cups that had been edited out of the originally posted image.
The post emphasized that the arrest and all items seized were authentic.
“The drugs, guns, drug paraphernalia and money are all real,” the post said.
No further details on the traffic stop were included in the post.
The sheriff’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.
Jacie Sellars
Jacie Sellars is the morning breaking news reporter for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. She joined the newspaper in May 2026 after graduating from Ouachita Baptist University with degrees in multimedia journalism and Spanish.
