The Super Bowl LVIII halftime show featuring Bad Bunny has sparked a flurry of online activity, but not all of it has been about the performance itself. A series of false claims and digitally manipulated content have circulated widely on social media, prompting fact-checkers to debunk several narratives surrounding the event.
A Child’s Grammy and a False ICE Connection
One widely shared claim alleged that the young boy Bad Bunny gifted a Grammy award to during his performance was Liam Conejo Ramos, who had previously been detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). This claim, circulating on platforms like Facebook, proved to be inaccurate. Fact-checking organization Lead Stories confirmed that the child featured in the halftime show was actually Lincoln Fox, a young actor who even shared a video of the experience on his Instagram page, stating, “I’m going to remember this day forever!”
The confusion stemmed from a separate story reported by The Guardian on , detailing the detention of a five-year-old boy named Liam Ramos and his father. However, a photograph accompanying The Guardian’s report clearly demonstrates that Liam Ramos is not the same child who appeared onstage with Bad Bunny.
Digitally Fabricated Protest and a Non-Existent Dress
Another false narrative emerged on X (formerly Twitter), featuring a video purporting to show Bad Bunny performing in a pink dress emblazoned with the words “ICE out.” The post, accompanied by a call to “boycott woke,” garnered over a million views and 8,200 likes. However, the video was demonstrably fake.
The NFL’s official YouTube channel published the full, thirteen-minute performance and at no point did Bad Bunny wear a pink dress or any other garment with the “ICE out” message. The audio accompanying the fabricated video featured El Chombo’s song “Chacarron,” which was not part of the actual Super Bowl halftime show setlist.
Analysis by the AI detection tool Hive Moderation determined that the video shared on X had a 99.7% probability of being AI-generated. Notably, the original poster even admitted the content wasn’t genuine, stating, “No. But it could have been, it was the worst halftime show ever.”
A Photoshopped Football and a Misleading Image
A final false claim circulating on X alleged that Bad Bunny held up a football with the message “Fuck ICE” at the end of his performance. This, too, was revealed to be a digitally altered image. The video of the performance, available on the NFL’s YouTube channel, shows the football clearly displaying the message “Together we are America” at the mark of 12 minutes and 38 seconds.
These incidents highlight the increasing prevalence of misinformation, particularly surrounding high-profile events like the Super Bowl. The speed at which these false narratives spread underscores the importance of robust fact-checking and critical evaluation of information encountered online. The reliance on AI-generated content to create and disseminate these falsehoods presents a growing challenge for both media organizations and social media platforms.
Bad Bunny’s performance itself, while generating the usual post-show debate about musical taste, was largely free of controversy. However, the manufactured narratives that followed demonstrate a willingness to exploit the event for political purposes, leveraging the power of social media and increasingly sophisticated AI tools to spread disinformation.
