Trump supporters forge AI deepfakes to woo Black voters Admirers of Donald Trump are creating fake AI-generated images depicting the former US president interacting with Black people, in the hope the pictures are interpreted by voters as a sign of increasing support from a key voter group that would bolster his attempt to regain the White House. Anyone can create fake images with …
Double fail - turns out they're copied from a parody account. Nothing to do with Trump or the Republicans, just some journalists who don't have a sense of humour and fail to do a basic fact check.
He also introduced Michael Jordan to basketball too!
https://twitter.com/Trump_History45
Not everything is about Trump.
Someone could just as easily generate a fake video of Biden making a speech and sounding cogent, cognisant and wide-awake.
Or Rishi sounding passionate and not-at-all like a wet blanket.
Or Keir sounding passionate and not-at-all like a wet blanket.
The problem is that these fake images or videos will proliferate and get seen by many people, and even if they are told afterwards that they are fake, they will still have some kind of influence on people's attitudes.
It feels like the AI wars are only just beginning, and people are going to see many many fake videos of politicians getting up to all kinds of things (good or bad) which just didn't really happen.
Imagine if someone puts out a fairly convincing but slightly blurred video of Trump in a Russian hotel pissing all over a prostitute. And it happens to come out around November. You won't be able to un-see that, even if you're told it's fake.
Likewise, Biden falling over or fainting Hillary style.
These sorts of things, if done well and timed just right could swing an election by a couple of percentage points.
I'm sure I'm not the first person to think of this.
Well yeah, this particular instance. But I was trying to make the point that it's a wider issue, and will be still going on long after trump has moved on to other things in 4 years. Just imagine, after his next presidency is over he might spend more time playing golf and shouting at clouds, and we can all start to try and forget about him. Here's hoping.
I guess in 2028 we'll have Ron Desantis looking like a midget, and Kemi Badenoch being anti semitic or something.
I wonder what fake Keir will get up to by the next-but-one election?
I'm sure people with better imaginations than myself will come up with something entertaining, shocking or hilarious... but fake.
> Not everything is about Trump.
>
> Someone could just as easily generate a fake video of Biden making a speech and sounding cogent, cognisant and wide-awake.
Or someone could just as easily generate a fake video of Trump himself making a speech and sounding coherent, veracious and sane.
Anybody remember the "photo" of Presidential candidate Barack Obama and the space alien that looked like something out of Close Encounters? The backstory as I remember it was the space alien had been in secret talks with both political parties and had decided to endorse Obama for President.
Of course anybody with more than two brain cells knew this was a joke but you see where this is going. Many people had half as many brain cells & insisted it was legit. The harpies on The View used their shared brain cell to declare that if space aliens visited Earth they would endorse Barry. This was a few years after Bill Clinton had declared himself the first black president & he didn't even need a doctored photo.
The first day of my college Freshman Economics class, the instructor told us that to understand the reality of an economy you must first understand three things: 1) the lies people are telling you, 2) the lies you tell yourself, and 3) the Truth. He called this Growing Up.
In the Age of AI people will have to grow up. Most won't like growing up and it won't happen until reality smacks them in the face enough times.
"In the Age of AI people will have to grow up. Most won't like growing up and it won't happen until reality smacks them in the face enough times."
In the last "few" years (ranging from 3 to 10), many folks have instead embraced the lies that make them comfortable, honestly believing them to be truth, calling truth "lies" and surrounding themselves with folks who believe the same to further insulate them from reality. And it happens at *both* extremes of any/every spectrum/facet of society.
IMHO, AI is going to reinforce this and further insulate people from reality rather than confront them with it. Society isn't "growing up" -- it's well past maturity and descending into child-like dementia (the kind where rational suppression fades and the old racist/sexist ideas come out at random).
No, this is not what's happening. The article is mentioning the parody account, but it is explicitly stating that it's just a parody. The accusations of using deepfakes for propaganda are leveled at an entirely different person, who is not a parody maker and who was doing exactly that.
Either you stopped reading after the first paragraph, or you're attempting another deception for propaganda purposes.
Doesn't matter. *Most* people are going to be looking at it briefly on a mobile phone. I'm guessing most people on The Reg are using a computer right now.
Also, a lot of people are just scrolling and will only look at the image for a fraction of a second probably, but it still creates the concept in their mind.
No. Read the article.
The article links to the parody account as examples of what you can do with image models, and explicitly states that it's a parody account.
The article then goes on to show that actual, real, non-parodic Trump supporters, such as a radio show host, have created and published fake images, only admitting they were fake after being called on it. These images are not linked, because The Register has ethics: unlike the parody images, they were actually created with deceitful intent, and linking to them would only spread them further. There is a second example of a Trump supporter employing fakes with deceitful intent on the linked BBC article.
TLDR: you are claiming that the article is railing against a parody account. The article does no such thing. A parody account is mentioned, but the accusation of using deepfake for propaganda is being leveled at someone who was doing exactly that.
and explicitly states that it's a parody account
no, it doesn't, please stop this lie. It falsely states that it was shared on X by a parody account , whereas it was created by that parody account (I hope you get the joke about Trump inventing the wheel). This is cheap political propaganda and ElReg should laugh about such pictures – may-be even participating in the joke noting the obvious factual error of Trump not wearing the black turtle-neck – rather than being snowflakes about such trivialities. This doesn't look like "biting the hand that feeds IT " but more like "barking with the dogs "
It's hard to imagine why Mark Kaye or anyone else might think such photos would in some way convince anyone of anything. If Tim Scott's cringe-inducing ass-kissing hasn't done that job, nothing will.
The "Black vote" of course is in no way monolithic. Voters are often persuaded by irrational impulses and impressions, but I think it's highly probable that the number influenced simply by images — real or fake — of either candidate associating with people of a particular demographic is quite small.
is that any black voter in the southern parts is just as likely to be "suppressed" whether he or she were sufficiently deceived by this image or deficient to vote for demented Donald or not.
I can imagine these shenanigans back firing in UK politics. If a fake image portraying sir Keir, more than half cut at an obviously boistrous piss up, surrounded by scantily clad nubiles, were published, I suspect Labour's vote at the next GE would leap. (Worked for Boris. :)
As for the US Presidential race - talk about the old men at the zoo - Demented Donald trumps Al Zheimer.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
