By Liam Reilly, CNN

(CNN) — Wednesday evening on the MAGA cable channel OAN, as Defense Department spokeswoman Kingsley Wilson gushed to host Matt Gaetz about an alleged year-over-year increase in female military recruits, four images of women soldiers in combat fatigues were displayed on-screen.

All four images were AI fakes.

The images appear to have been generated using Elon Musk’s Grok?, as small watermarks in the bottom corners indicate.

“These numbers are fantastic,” Wilson told Gaetz as the AI images scrolled on-screen. “Under the previous administration, we had about 16,000 female recruits last year; now we’ve got upwards of 24,000,” she continued. “It is a testament to Secretary Hegseth and President Trump’s leadership.” (The Pentagon has not officially released detailed data on female recruitment, but it told Fox News those same figures.)

A DOD spokesperson said the images were not provided by them, so CNN on Thursday asked OAN whether its staff generated the photos and if the network has any policy regarding AI-generated content.

“The images violated company policies, which have been re-enforced with all staff,” an OAN spokesperson told CNN. “An on-air correction has been put in place. Management has taken additional actions to ensure the issue is appropriately addressed.”

During Thursday evening’s broadcast, Gaetz apologized for using the AI-generated images. “We made a mistake,” he said. “We used AI-generated images of female service members as part of our B-roll package, and we shouldn’t have. The DOD didn’t give us these images; Grok did. And we’ll use better judgment going forward.”

OAN, short for One America News, launched in 2013, and during Trump’s first administration, it quickly morphed into a conspiracy-heavy, MAGA-boosting outlet.

The little-watched cable channel has become best-known for promoting Trump’s 2020 election lies, and it has settled multiple defamation lawsuits resulting from those on-air claims. Last year, the network settled a lawsuit from voting technology company Smartmatic alleging the channel boosted the election lies in order to “increase viewership and revenue.”

The network also settled a defamation suit from a Dominion Voting Systems executive, but it still faces a separate defamation lawsuit from the company.

OAN’s viewership and revenue have dwindled since DirecTV dropped it in 2022. However, earlier this year, it received a PR boost when Kari Lake, Trump’s pick to run a hollowed-out Voice of America, claimed that OAN will provide “newsfeed services” to VOA and other US-funded international broadcasters.

This story has been updated with comments from OAN and Gaetz.

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