Surprising no one, Trump falls for false Harris AI crowd size conspiracy
Failing to sensibly explain the very visible enthusiasm for Kamala Harris, her opponent, Donald Trump, falsely accused the Democratic presidential candidate’s campaign of using AI technology to fabricate images of the crowd sizes at her rallies.
Image by Getty Images.
Failing to sensibly explain the very visible enthusiasm for Kamala Harris, her opponent, Donald Trump, falsely accused the Democratic presidential candidate’s campaign of using AI technology to fabricate images of the crowd sizes at her rallies.
“Has anyone noticed that Kamala CHEATED at the airport? 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!” the Republican presidential nominee wrote on Truth Social on Sunday.
Trump shared a screenshot of the image of a large crowd gathered on the tarmac in Michigan and greeting Harris, now making rounds on social media. “She had NOBODY waiting,” Trump wrote.
In fact, there were indeed 15,000 people gathered at the airport, and there’s no evidence photos were altered using AI.
A bunch of photos from the event in a key swing state Harris and her running mate Tim Walz are keen to win are actually included in the Getty Images database. Oh, and there are videos.
“Donald Trump is going to lose because of nonsense like this. A million real issues facing the country and he chooses to embrace this bullshit. Trump is obviously known to make wild unfounded claims, but this one is beyond clownish,” Steven Greenstreet, a filmmaker working for the New York Post, a newspaper supporting Trump, said on X.
He also posted some images from a recent Trump rally, mocking the former President and his devotees: “I don't see the people in the reflections behind you. Did you AI a fake crowd into these shots? The people demand answers!”
Hi @realDonaldTrump!
undefined Steven Greenstreet 🐷 (@MiddleOfMayhem) August 11, 2024
I don't see the people in the reflections behind you.
Did you AI a fake crowd into these shots?
The people demand answers! pic.twitter.com/mKxakA119t
Of course, Trump has always been obsessed with crowd size as an alleged metric of success. He recently asserted at a news conference that “nobody’s spoken to crowds bigger than me.”
However, David Plouffe, a senior adviser for Kamala Harris for President, expressed concern on X about Trump’s – who also repeated his false allegations that the 2022 presidential election, when he lost to Joe Biden, was “rigged” – comments.
“These are not conspiratorial rantings from the deepest recesses of the internet. The author could have the nuclear codes and be responsible for decisions that will affect us all for decades,” said Plouffe.
As Cybernews recently reported, AI can be used to support election administration in different ways, such as improving efficiency, security, and election transparency.
However, the rise of deepfake technology presents a new threat to electoral integrity. Threat actors, including political opponents, can use the technology to create highly convincing but fabricated content with the intent to deceive the public and influence their voting decisions.