DOGE.gov Website Launches With Mangled, AI-Generated American Flag

With Donald Trump firmly in place as president, Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is finally off to the races.

As such, its brand new website — DOGE.gov — launched yesterday. And as we couldn't help but notice, it was adorned with a graphic of an AI-generated Shiba Innu waving a mangled American flag that featured 11 stripes and a deformed mush of about 37 stars.

As any patriotic American knows, the current design of the US flag is codified by a 1948 executive order specifying that it features 13 stripes, representing the original colonies, and a number of stars equal to the current number of states; in 1948 that figure was 48, and since the addition of Alaska and Hawaii, it's risen to 50.

Just compare that elegant design document to this AI-generated slop — in addition to the butchered flag, get a load of the wriggly typography and weird artifact on the dog's snout — which may well mark the first time that shoddy AI art has appeared on an official website of the US government.

True to its name, the DOGE website certainly takes an austere approach to web design. American taxpayers loading the government website won't find themselves burdened by wasteful copy or reckless hamburger menus, but rather a single landing page.

"An official website of the United States government," it currently reads. "Department of Government Efficiency. The people voted for major reform."

As of today, the site has been stripped of the image —but not before snapshots of it were saved to the Internet Archive, hopefully preserving this blip of American history for centuries to come.

The AI carnage is an early illustration of Musk's many conflicts of interest in his new government role. After years of fearmongering about AI — and first cofounding before dramatically falling out with OpenAI as an effort to guide its development — he has now founded his own AI multi-billion dollar startup, xAI, and integrated its offerings into X-formerly-Twitter, which he purchased in 2022.

For what it's worth, Trump has previously called for prison time for "if you do anything to desecrate the American flag."

And for anyone who's been following the DOGE saga, the site's bizarre rollout is about as apropos as it gets. Yesterday, it was widely reported that DOGE "co-czar" and GOP tag along Vivek Ramaswamy had officially stepped down from his previous responsibilities with DOGE, whatever those were.

Ramaswamy's departure is no surprise — he's been notably absent from the public stage following a rift with Elon Musk over the tricky ethics of migrant-slave labor — but signals a new era for the two moguls, who had previously moved in lockstep prior to Trump's inauguration with the aim of slashing federal funding.

With only Musk remaining at the helm, it remains to be seen how austere the federal spending cuts are going to get as he attempts to fulfill his promise of cutting government spending by trillions of dollars. The big question? What federal programs will be on the chopping block — and whether Musk might lead by example and cut himself off from his own government welfare.

More on government spending: Elon Musk Throws Tantrum, Ordering Congress to Shut Down Government

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