Michigan Credit Union CEO Fired After AI-Edited ‘Lake America’ Sweatshirt Photo Goes Viral

The chief executive of a Michigan credit union has lost her job after a family vacation photo featuring “Lake America” sweatshirts went viral and set off a public backlash.

Jane Smith, formerly CEO of Family First Credit Union, came under scrutiny after posting a photo showing herself and three relatives wearing navy blue crewneck sweatshirts with the words “Lake America” written across the front in white. The phrase was a reference to President Donald Trump’s controversial relabeling of Lake Ontario, a move widely seen as a jab at Canada amid worsening trade tensions.

The photo was taken September 11 as Smith and her family were leaving for what was supposed to be a 10-day trip to Halifax, Nova Scotia. But according to Smith, the sweatshirts were not real. She said the image was digitally altered using AI after her family joked about the president’s executive order and the political uproar surrounding the lake’s new name.

“We weren’t trying to make a political statement,” Smith told WJRT. “However, we were kind of poking fun at the fact that one of the Great Lakes’ names were getting changed.”

That explanation did not save her job.

Family First Credit Union announced Wednesday that Smith was no longer with the company. Jason Acosta, the credit union’s chief operations officer, has been named interim CEO.

In a public statement, the credit union apologized for the controversy and said the matter had caused “concern, disappointment and pain” among members and the broader community.

“We understand that members of our community may hold different perspectives about this decision,” the credit union wrote. “Our responsibility is to act in the best interest of the Credit Union, uphold the trust of our members and continue putting our community first.”

Smith said the family never owned or wore the sweatshirts. The original photo, she said, was simply run through ChatGPT to add the matching “Lake America” shirts as a joke.

“We never had actual sweatshirts. We never wore sweatshirts,” Smith said.

Still, the image landed badly, especially because the family was traveling to Canada. Smith acknowledged that Canadians could reasonably have viewed the image as insulting if they believed the shirts were real.

“I understand if I was someone in Halifax and I thought a group of people walked in wearing those sweatshirts, it is highly offensive and I would understand why they would be so angry,” she said.

The backlash reportedly grew intense enough that Smith and her family cut their trip short and returned home. Smith said she received death threats after the photo spread online.

“I am not a person that would ever want to offend or hurt anybody,” she said. “I do regret having any post that would make someone feel like we don’t value them as human beings.”

The controversy comes as Trump’s push to rename geographic landmarks continues to stir anger at home and abroad. In addition to the Lake Ontario/Lake America dispute, the administration has also pushed the name “Gulf of America” for the Gulf of Mexico. Major technology companies, including Google and Apple, have faced criticism for displaying the altered names to U.S. users on their map platforms.

What began as an AI-assisted family joke quickly became a full-blown corporate crisis. Smith insists the photo was not meant as a political statement and that the sweatshirts never existed outside the edited image. But once the picture went viral, Family First Credit Union evidently decided the damage to public trust was too great.

In the end, a fake sweatshirt became real enough to cost a CEO her job.