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After being a major target of deepfakes himself, Donald Trump has falsely shared AI-generated images of Taylor Swift and her fans supporting his presidential campaign.
On 18 August, in what appears to be a now-deleted post to X (formerly Twitter), the former president and current Republican presidential candidate shared a number of AI-generated images suggesting Swift and her fans are supporting his run for president, accompanied by the caption “I accept!”
Three of the images are AI-generated, including two images of young women wearing shirts that say “Swifties for Trump.”
One of these is actually a compilation of six images, posted by a satirical news site with the headline “Swifties turning to Trump after ISIS foiled Taylor Swift concert”, referring to three concerts that were cancelled in Austria earlier this month after authorities discovered that there were plans for attacks on the venue by three individuals, two of which who pledged allegiance to ISIS-K, a regional branch of the terrorist organisation.
The third image depicts Swift dressed as Uncle Sam, with the tagline “Taylor wants you to VOTE for Donald Trump”.
The post also includes two images of 19-year-old Jenna Piwowarczyk, a Taylor Swift fan and Trump supporter who was photographed wearing a ‘Swifties for Trump’ shirt during a campaign rally in Wisconsin.
All of the images in Trump’s post are screenshots of posts by right-wing X accounts.
The post sparked fury from Swift fans, who called out Trump for spreading misinformation.
According to a source close to Swift, speaking with The Daily Mail, not only has Swift not endorsed any presidential candidates, she will not be supporting Trump.
“If she didn’t support him last time, she’s not going to support him now,” said the source.
“He’s clearly lost it. In more ways than one.”
Additionally, Swift endorsed the Democrats in the 2020 election and was critical of Trump during his presidency.
Despite his war against “fake news” during the 2016 elections, Trump has posted several misleading AI images. On the same day as the Swift post, Trump posted an image of Democratic candidate Kamala Harris speaking at what appears to be a rally in Chicago, with a large banner donned with the communist hammer and sickle symbol.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 18, 2024
Trump’s latest posts come as the former president became a poster child for unregulated AI image generation, after X’s AI chatbot Grok gained image creation abilities.
The Grok platform is a dedicated tab on X, and users – though only Premium and Premium Plus users can access the tech – can post images directly to their X accounts. This is exactly what many people are doing to illustrate just how unregulated and unfiltered Grok’s image generation really is.
Civil rights attorney and activist Alejandra Caraballo posted just four images that showed how wild Grok 2’s image generation is. One is of Donald Trump cradling an AR-15-like firearm while piloting an aircraft towards the burning World Trade Centre in New York. Another depicted fast-food mascot Ronald McDonald, splattered with blood, again holding an assault rifle, while another showed a Disney character beating another Disney character to death with a wooden board.
“Oh my god. Grok has absolutely no filters for its image generation,” Caraballo said in her post.
“This is one of the most reckless and irresponsible AI implementations I’ve ever seen.”
This is despite having guidelines against creating images that are violent, hateful, pornographic, infringe copyright or are misleading or result in real-world harm.
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