An image of Donald Trump dressed as a football player last weekend set the tone for the Republican nominee’s latest campaign push. The image shows Trump as a burly player with veiny arms, glaring from a Steelers uniform on the field at Pittsburgh’s Acrisure Stadium. Although Trump really attended a Steelers game during his campaign visit to Pennsylvania, it is the AI-generated image of “football star Trump” that everyone is commenting.
The overly flattering fake photo generated media coverage, fueled the conversation connecting Trump to a key battleground state, and provided top-notch meme material, all without the alarmist news cycles that often follow. his most erratic speeches at rallies. Instead, the Steelers image perfectly sums up Trump’s final argument: He’s a fighter on the field and a man of the people, he’s in on the joke, and the real joke is that anyone dares to doubt him. .
Using artificial visual resources as tools has been part of Trump’s political message for years. He held his first press conference as president-elect in January 2017, standing next to stacks of binders that supposedly proved he would hand over all of his companies to his children, binders that looked suspiciously full of blank pages (no one was allowed to reporters access them).
Similarly, during an interview at 60 Minutes In 2020, Trump’s team presented journalist Lesley Stahl with a huge notebook that supposedly contained a health plan integral, of which Stahl claimed it was false. Between those two moments of his only presidential term, Trump showed a map obviously and clumsily altered with a marker as evidence that his erroneous warning about Hurricane Dorian’s path toward Alabama was correct (when it wasn’t).
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In addition to Florida – South Carolina, North Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama, will most likely be hit (much) harder than anticipated. Looking like one of the largest hurricanes ever. Already category 5. BE CAREFUL! GOD BLESS EVERYONE!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 1, 2019
Trump left office nearly two years before OpenAI went mainstream in late 2022. When he began his current presidential campaign earlier this year, there was no way to predict how Trump and his allies might use OpenAI’s visual and audio assets. AI to win the election.
Finally, the apocalyptic scenario, a daily bombardment of false images that are difficult to deny, has not yet materialized. With less than two weeks until the election, it might not arrive. Although AI was a factor in the recent disinformation campaign that spread panic among Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, this election cycle has featured mostly, but not entirely, traditional misinformation, handmade. After all, why bother generating images with AI when just sharing falsehoods on TikTok is enough?
When Trump has used AI-generated images for explicit political purposes, it appears to have backfired. After sharing fabricated photos of Taylor Swift supporting him, he quickly distanced himself from themprobably for legal reasons. Not only did the move generate a lot of negative press, but it apparently helped inspire resounding support from Swift a Kamala Harris.
Trump also used AI as a political cartoon factory when he shared a fake image showing Harris’ DNC speech as a communist rally (Trump ally Elon Musk did the same days later with an even more ridiculous image). Posts like these don’t dignify anyone involved, but they are not designed in the way many feared AI would be used in this election. Few people, if any, saw those images and believed that Harris secretly wears a communist uniform, complete with hammer and sickle insignia. Most probably understood these images for what they are: a low-effort, high-tech way to make provocative posts.
Although the use of AI for smears may alienate some undecided voters, Trump has also shared many more neutral fake images, such as the one of the Steelers. He has posted AI-generated images of himself riding a lion and performing difficult choreography, among other activities. These images are a cleaner way to project strength in a fun way than the poorly edited post he shared in August, which showed him and other figures in the MAGA movement as Justice League superheroes.
Through the use of AI, Trump (or, more precisely, the members of Trump’s team who master this technology) can be or do whatever he wants. It’s surprising that he hasn’t yet shared AI footage of himself as a cop, cowboy, or soldier, considering how prominently the Village People feature in his rally playlists, not to mention how much he enjoys taking on other roles. That kind of content seems to energize their base, which generates plenty of similar images on their own, and gives everyone else something relatively harmless to roll their eyes at or scoff at. In other words, it’s a great way to distract people from your politics.
Another way to do it is with projection. As of this writing, neither Harris nor her predecessor Joe Biden appear to have used AI to generate campaign materials. That fact did not stop Trump, however, from accusing the other side of using AI in a deceptive manner. In August, he claimed that Harris organized a large campaign rally in Detroit using digitally created crowds. (What does it matter if TikTokers shared videos of the event?) Although his claims were quickly debunked, Trump managed to get the entire internet talking about Harris and AI for a day, instead of his then-growing campaign momentum.
The same day Trump shared that Steelers image, he captured national attention once again with a viral photo shoot at McDonald’s. The images of the former president, dressed in an apron and in charge of a deep fryer, had the unreal glow of AI, and it seemed that every social media account in the United States felt compelled to celebrate or mock them.
However, because Trump can’t help being Trump, part of that conversation turned to a lie he told about McDonald’s “debunking” Harris’ claim that she worked at that chain during her youth, and a revealing question that he avoided during the publicity eventon whether he thinks fast food workers deserve a minimum wage of $15 an hour.
None of those complications followed Trump when he shared the AI-generated image of himself as a Steeler, just the joyful celebration, helpless mockery, and gratuitous media coverage.
Trump has always sold his followers a fantasy. In the age of AI, it is a fantasy they no longer have to imagine. And for many of them, it certainly beats reality.
