{"id":263465,"date":"2026-06-03T18:21:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-03T22:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/03\/jacksandrei-blakenekov-pro-hurricanes-post-by-us-senate-candidate-skewered-by-nc-fans-over-ai-use-wral-com\/"},"modified":"2026-06-03T18:50:17","modified_gmt":"2026-06-03T22:50:17","slug":"jacksandrei-blakenekov-pro-hurricanes-post-by-us-senate-candidate-skewered-by-nc-fans-over-ai-use-wral-com","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/03\/jacksandrei-blakenekov-pro-hurricanes-post-by-us-senate-candidate-skewered-by-nc-fans-over-ai-use-wral-com\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Jacksandrei Blakenekov\u2019: Pro-Hurricanes post by US Senate candidate skewered by NC fans over AI use :: WRAL.com"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2018Jacksandrei Blakenekov\u2019: Pro-Hurricanes post by US Senate candidate skewered by NC fans over AI use :: WRAL.com<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.wral.com\/news\/nccapitol\/pro-carolina-hurricanes-post-by-us-senate-candidate-whatley-draws-scrutiny-for-ai-use-june-2026\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-06-03 18:21:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: www.wral.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Democrats and some Carolina Hurricanes fans are criticizing Republican U.S. Senate candidate Michael Whatley for a social media message cheering on Raleigh\u2019s NHL team. They\u2019re accusing him of being a fair-weather fan and using artificial intelligence to create images of a fake player.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ahead of the team\u2019s Game 1 Stanley Cup Final loss to the Vegas Golden Knights Tuesday, a post appeared on a Whatley social media account, saying: \u201cLet\u2019s go, Canes!\u201d The message, posted on his X account, featured emojis of a hockey stick and an American flag.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s go, Canes! \ud83c\udfd2\ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\uddf8 pic.twitter.com\/TTgCNisONB<\/p>\n

\u2014 Michael Whatley (@WhatleyNC) June 2, 2026 <\/p>\n

Some social media users took issue with another feature of the post: An image of what appears to be a Hurricanes player that accompanied the message. The problem: Fans had a difficult time identifying the player.\u00a0<\/p>\n

They accused Whatley of using artificial intelligence to create the image, pointing to garbled letters on a jersey where the NHL logo typically is and helmet stickers that are inconsistent with the team\u2019s current branding. While a few users took the opportunity to praise Whatley in responses, many derided the post as \u201cAI slop.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

At least one fan implied that the image looked like a mashup of two Hurricanes forwards, Jackson Blake and Andrei Svechnikov.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cJacksandrei Blakenekov, also one of my favorite HHL players. Why\u2019s everyone so upset?\u201d a user quipped in response to Whatley\u2019s post, which had been viewed by almost 300,000 users by late Wednesday.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cNothing says…<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u2018Jacksandrei Blakenekov\u2019: Pro-Hurricanes post by US Senate candidate skewered by NC fans over AI use…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":263466,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/images.wral.com\/739e85bb-600d-4b3c-a702-4b6b97956111?w=1200&h=630","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-263465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artificial-intelligence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263465"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=263465"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263465\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":263468,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/263465\/revisions\/263468"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/263466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=263465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=263465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}