The video shows Jesus punching Donald Trump straight into hell. Except, that’s not Jesus…
The video begins with a now-familiar scene. Donald Trump plays the role of Jesus, laying hands on a sick man in an effort to summon divine healing. Eagles flap about behind him. Disciples, one a nurse, another a soldier, kneel beside the bed. Some of them clasp their hands in reverent prayer. So far, so reminiscent of an image posted to Truth Social by the president of the United States.
But then, a figure appears in the distance. It looks like Jesus. He floats from the clouds as a movie trailer-esque voice intones “your reckoning has come”. “What is this?” a man screams. The eagles turn to fighter jets as Jesus socks Trump straight in the mouth. Blood spews across the screen as the president is propelled sideways and down, straight into the fiery pits of hell.
The video, posted to X by the Iranian embassy in Tajikistan, is part of the AI-generated propaganda war being waged in the background to the actual, physical war in the Strait of Hormuz. It has gone viral and been covered by outlets such as The Hill and Staten Island Advance. But provided you ignore the small matter of how the Iran war is likely to drive up the price of almost everything during a crippling cost of living crisis, it’s irrelevant to New Zealand.
Except, wait a second. Who is it that’s actually smashing the US president straight into Satan’s bedchamber? Freeze frame. Zoom in on the moment of the punch. That’s not Jesus, leading character from the popular book The Bible and movies such as The Passion of the Christ. That’s NBA star Steven Adams, a large man from Rotorua who plays centre for the Houston Rockets.
Look at the photo archives, and the evidence is clear. The Jesus of the AI-generated Iranian propaganda video emulates Adams, right down to his yelling style, as evidenced by photos taken from an in-game shot from Adams’ stint with the Memphis Grizzlies, a recent Powerade commercial and several more sources.
The fake Jesus’ hair and beard also mimics Adams, his signature long locks fluttering behind as he smashes Trump’s mandible into dust.
But how did New Zealand’s lone NBA star wind up as a prop in Iran’s propaganda efforts? The Iranian embassy in Tajikistan didn’t respond to emails. Neither did Adams himself.
That means the only option is a tried and true journalistic technique: guesswork. Internet nerd and disinformation commentator Dylan Reeve suspects someone at the Iranian embassy uploaded Adams’ image as part of their AI video prompt. “Not sure why they would have ended up with him specifically though. You’d assume they’d have more immediately familiar models from Iranian pop culture,” he says. “Maybe the person creating it is an NBA fan and just happened to think Adams had the right look?”
Maybe, and Adams does resemble many modern representations of Jesus, with his plentiful hair and love of loaves and fishes.
He’s also widely regarded as the NBA’s strongest player, while bearing a striking resemblance to another massive famous man, Aquaman star Jason Momoa.
AI expert Nyssa Waters says together, those qualities make him a perfect candidate for an AI that’s been told to produce a strong, Messiah-ish man capable of crushing a New York property developer’s face with his fists. “I’d suggest the prompt was simple: strong man, long hair, beard, Jesus, superhero,” she says. “Between Momoa and Adams, that’s a win with data points.”
Waters says New Zealand has some of the loosest protections in the world when it comes to residents’ data, and images of local athletes like Adams make for prime targets when it comes to training AI models. “It’s likely that there is a large amount of training data that has been used on sports for male figure image generation. There’s a reason why most women have big boobs in images and it’s because porn is the largest training database for females (sadly),” she says.
The way he got there might be infused with a familiar modern bleakness, but Adams has ended up in a position that would be the envy of many New Zealanders. The Iran war has kicked our nation in its already tender economic goolies, inflating people’s costs and threatening supply chains despite our complete lack of involvement in the conflict. That damage is mostly the result of the decisions of one man; a president who oscillates between declaring victory and threatening nuclear annihilation. It’s only fair that one of us gets to dress up in a robe and hit him with a right hook, even if it only happens within a morally dubious forgery generated by a robot.
