Donald Trump has posted a few fake social media images of pop superstar Taylor Swift asking people to vote for him in the November election. These images on his own Truth Social that make it look like Taylor Swift fans are rocking T-shirts saying “Swifties for Trump.” One of the images was a mock “Uncle Sam” poster with Swift’s face that said, “Taylor wants you to vote for Donald Trump.” Trump’s response? “I accept!”
Taylor Swift is being targeted again by deepfakes, with supporters of Donald Trump posting manipulated media falsely showing her supporting Trump and engaging in election denialism. Deepfakes are real media that is manipulated, often with the help of artificial intelligence. AI-generated images and videos of Swift have repeatedly gone viral this year.
AI to the Rescue for Trump?
While some of the images Trump shared feature a real woman who supports Trump, most of the women depicted there aren’t real. Many of them are representations of people created using artificial intelligence. The images Trump shared had originally been posted on X by highly followed pro-Trump accounts.
Swift has not publicly endorsed a candidate in the 2024 race but has supported Democrats in the past. The singer backed President Biden and running mate Kamala Harris in 2020. Harris is set to be formally nominated as the 2024 Democratic presidential candidate at the party’s national convention going on in Chicago right now. Swift also criticized Trump in a 2020 documentary.
Negative Impact of AI
Meanwhile, advocates in the music industry, Hollywood and Washington have been pushing for federal legislation and other measures to fight the explosion of fake AI images online. Trump’s post was yet another example of AI’s power to create misinformation.
During his time in office and on the campaign trail, Trump has had a knack for sharing spicy memes from his online fans. He used to drop them on Twitter until he got kicked off in 2021, after which he started sharing them on his own Twitter look-alike, Truth Social. Now that he’s back on X (formerly Twitter), he’s still at it. Recently, he posted a bogus image of Kamala Harris in front of a communist symbol on both X and Truth Social.
The potential harms to the society that could result from such misinformation, including abuses of elections, Sri Lanka included, are wide-reaching and immensely damaging.
Read more – The Negative Impact of AI – A Deep Dive into Real-Life Examples and Concerns
