Former president Donald Trump has shared AI-generated pictures that falsely declare Taylor Swift followers are supporting his marketing campaign.
In a publish on Reality Social, Trump shared screenshots of 4 posts on X that purport to indicate plenty of younger girls all carrying “Swifties for Trump” T-shirts in quite a lot of kinds. One of many screenshots claimed that Swifties are supporting Trump now after Taylor Swift canceled her live performance in Vienna attributable to safety considerations. One other picture included the phrase “Taylor desires you to vote for Donald Trump.”
“I settle for!” Trump captioned his publish.
Nevertheless, Trump’s publish seems to include a mix of actual and AI-generated pictures that falsely recommend a widespread and coordinated motion of Swifties for Trump. Utilizing a instrument created by nonprofit True Media to detect the unfold of election-related deepfakes, WIRED discovered that most of the pictures shared by Trump present “substantial proof of manipulation.”
One of many screenshots Trump shared was from an nameless pro-Trump account with over 300,000 followers that usually posts AI-generated pictures. Following its publish about Swifties for Trump, this account shared a follow-up publish that mentioned the unique Swifties for Trump publish was “satire.”
Whereas there doesn’t look like an energetic Swifties for Trump marketing campaign initiative, there may be an energetic Swifties for Harris group. “We don’t signify each Swiftie, however I feel there’s a purpose we don’t want AI to indicate our assist for Kamala,” Irene Kim, cofounder of Swifties4Harris, tells WIRED.
There’s at the very least one public Swiftie for Trump. Among the many pictures shared by Trump on Sunday on Reality Social was an actual image of Jenna Piwowarczyk, who wore a home made T-shirt to a Racine, Wisconsin, Trump rally in June, emblazoned with the phrases “Swifties for Trump.” Piwowarczyk is now promoting her home made T-shirts on Etsy.
Trump has persistently shared AI-generated pictures. Final week, Trump falsely claimed that the Harris marketing campaign was utilizing AI to artificially inflate crowd sizes at her rallies. Over the weekend, Trump additionally posted an AI-generated picture on X of Harris talking on the Democratic Nationwide Conference in Chicago with a Soviet Union flag hanging over the group.
Disinformation specialists have warned concerning the risk posed to the integrity of elections by generative AI instruments. Already this yr, WIRED has tracked dozens of examples of content material created utilizing generative AI in elections throughout the globe.
Swift has not publicly endorsed any candidate for president, however she did endorse President Joe Biden in 2020. She has additionally strongly criticized Trump: After Trump made his notorious “when the looting begins, the taking pictures begins” remark in 2020 following Black Lives Matter protests in assist of George Floyd, the pop famous person slammed the then-president for having “the nerve to feign ethical superiority” after “stoking the fires of white supremacy and racism your whole presidency.”
