Early Sunday morning, former president Donald Trump took to X-formerly-Twitter to share an AI-generated image of vice president Kamala Harris wearing a red suit and facing a packed arena of faceless figures who all appear to be decked in Soviet-era military garb. Some members of the fake crowd are pictured flying red flags, while a massive, unfurled banner hanging above the arena depicts a communist hammer and sickle symbol.  To the right of that banner, a red-lettered neon sign simply reads: "CHICAGO."

Trump didn't caption the AI-spun image. But shared ahead of this week's Democratic National Convention in Chicago, the image is clearly intended to suggest that Harris — Trump's Democratic rival in the 2024 election — is a communist, and that the forthcoming convention will be akin to a Marxist rally.

The former president has repeatedly referred to Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, as communists in recent weeks, for example telling Fox News earlier this month that theirs "is a ticket that would want this country to go communist immediately, if not sooner."

Now, Trump is using AI to further double down on his chosen line of attack — an escalation that raises questions of whether it's ethical for a presidential candidate to utilize AI-generated imagery to attack their opponent, and where we draw the line at what we consider propaganda.

What's more, in an incredible twist of irony, Trump falsely accused Harris just last week of using AI to drum up fake imagery of a large crowd greeting her at the airport. The photos, of course, were real.

"Has anyone noticed that Kamala CHEATED at the airport? There was nobody at the plane, and she 'A.I.'d it,'" the former president wrote in a furious Truth Social post. "She should be disqualified because the creation of a fake image is ELECTION INTERFERENCE. Anyone who does that will cheat at ANYTHING!"

On the one hand, politicians making exaggerated claims about their opponent's political leanings is far from new. But the facilitation of AI-generated propaganda — the politicized circulation of misleading ideas, allegations, or narratives designed to intentionally either further one's own cause or malign one's opposition (or both) — is a bit different than a politician just reiterating a given attack line during an election cycle, and propaganda is known to be particularly effective when imagery is included.

And as many scholars have noted, AI is a useful tool for the fast creation of propaganda and misinformation; social media, meanwhile, makes it incredibly easy to disseminate it.

In other words: propaganda is an old dog, but in the AI age, it has new tricks.

Trump is no stranger to AI-generated imagery. Last year, amid mounting legal woes, the former president shared an AI-generated image of himself kneeling in prayer to Truth Social (as Forbes reported at the time, the image started circulating amongst the online MAGA community before Trump picked it up and posted it himself a few days later.)

That said, though, we'd argue that a candidate sharing an AI image of themself praying is pretty different from a candidate — not to mention a candidate who's also a former president — sharing a synthetic image of their political opponent leading a communist revolution from an official social media account. Call it the red scare, but with an added AI twist.

Meanwhile, X-formerly-Twitter, which has practically given up on content moderation since Musk’s takeover — the richest man in the world recently endorsed Trump for president and even altered X's code to support Trump — has failed to mark the widely-shared post as AI-generated, despite its user guidelines noting that the platform may "label posts containing synthetic and manipulated media to help people understand their authenticity and to provide additional context."

Political fatigue is real, especially in an era marred by the murkiness of disinformation and propaganda. But when any presidential candidate uses emerging technology like generative AI to push politicized content that doubles down on misleading accusations about an opponent's platform, it's something we should continue to take seriously — and take the time to call out.

More on Trump and AI: Trump Is so Mad about Harris' Huge Crowds That He's Lying That They're AI-Generated


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