“BUT THEY DIDN’T EXIST!”
Size Matters
Donald Trump took to the app Truth Social yesterday to claim that Vice President Kamala Harris had used AI — or, as he put it, “A.I.’d it” — to generate a picture of a big crowd greeting her at an airport. One tiny problem: Trump’s claim was entirely bogus, based entirely on a widely-shared lie.
“Has anyone noticed that Kamala CHEATED at the airport?” Trump captioned the inaccurate “Truth,” as posts to Truth Social are called. “There was nobody at the plane, and she ‘A.I.’d’ it, and showed a massive ‘crowd’ of so-called followers, BUT THEY DIDN’T EXIST!”
He then added that Harris should be “disqualified [from the presidential race] because the creation of a fake image is ELECTION INTERFERENCE,” and affixed the post with a screenshot from a post on X-formerly-Twitter of the alleged AI lie. The post, however, was from a far-right poster and election denier claiming that a “BREAKING REPORT” revealed the Harris campaign was “BUSTED” using a “FAKE crowd photo at campaign rally stop.” (There was no report; it was just this dude’s tweet.)
In other words, a presidential candidate in the 2024 race boosted misinformation — spouted by a random poster, no less — which falsely claimed his opponent had used AI to fabricate crowd size.
“AI’d It”
A CNBC photo of the event confirms that Harris’ touchdown in Michigan indeed drew several thousand supporters to the tarmac. The Harris campaign also denied using AI to create the image, telling CNBC that roughly 15,000 (actual) humans attended the rally.
Speaking of size, it’s been widely reported that record-breaking attendance numbers at Harris rallies has been aggravating an increasingly-isolated Trump. To wit: during a press conference at Mar-A-Lago last week, Trump, irritated when a reporter asked him about Harris’ rally turnout, promptly compared his January 6 crowd to Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech, even saying that his pre-insurrection speech garnered “more people” than the civil right leader’s historic address. (That claim isn’t true, either.)
“I’ve spoken to the biggest crowds,” the former president declared, as quoted by The Washington Post. “Nobody’s spoken to crowds bigger than me.”
Trump’s AI lie is a perfect example of the threat of AI-generated media, as opposed to actual AI-generated media, being used to undermine our shared reality. The viral images from Harris’ rally weren’t AI-generated — but judging by the comments over on X, the allegation itself was enough to convince some posters of AI conspiracy.
“What Kamala can’t achieve, she will deceive,” wrote one poster.
More on Trump: “Trump Is a Coward” Trends on Truth Social
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