Associated Incidents
Donald Trump supporters have been sharing AI-generated images of the Republican frontrunner posing with black voters.
In an apparent effort to encourage African-Americans to vote for Trump, dozens of deepfakes have been circulated portraying black people supporting the former president, the BBC Panorama programme discovered. The AI-generated images have not been directly linked to the Trump campaign.
At first glance one image showing Trump sitting on a veranda with a group of black men looks real, but upon investigation Trump's hands appear distorted, a telltale sign of digitally created pictures.
According to Panorama, the image originated on a satirical social media account that uses AI technology to generate images of Trump. However, the image was co-opted by a Trump supporter from Michigan, who reposted it with the false caption: "What do you think about Trump stopping his motorcade to take pictures with young men that waved him down?"
The image was then shared widely on social media, gaining over 1.4 million views on Twitter/X. Users were quick to point to Trump's "chicken claw as a hand", denouncing the hoax, but others seemed to have believed the image was real.
Fake photographs are emerging as a powerful disinformation tool in the run-up to the US presidential election in November.
In January, Trump shared an AI-generated image of himself praying in a church on Truth Social, his social media platform. Likely generated with text-to-image modelling software, the picture shows Trump bathed in light from a church window, his head bowed in prayer, with six fingers on each hand.
In March last year, before Trump's indictment over allegations he paid hush money to the porn star Stormy Daniels, a series of dramatic AI images generated showed the former president being held to the ground by police officers before being led away and jailed.
Other fake images show Trump with black civil rights leader Martin Luther King, who was assassinated in 1968
Black voters were vital to Biden's election win in 2020, with the president having received 92 per cent of the black vote, according to data from the Pew Research Center.
Trump has been openly attempting to woo black voters during his campaign for the upcoming election. However, his comments that black voters were more drawn to him after his multiple indictments on criminal charges were described by the White House as "repugnant and divisive".