A couple of weeks ago, Donald Trump decided it would be fun to accuse the US vice-president, Kamala Harris, of using AI in images showing a large crowd greeting her at an airport. “Has anyone noticed that Kamala CHEATED at the airport?” Trump furiously thumbed into his phone. “There was nobody at the plane, and she ‘AI’d it […] She should be disqualified because the creation of a fake image is ELECTION INTERFERENCE. Anyone who does that will cheat at ANYTHING!”
Just as some animals are more equal than others, some politicians are more honest. So this week, when the former president himself posted an obviously AI-generated image of what looks like the back of Harris’s head in front of an enormous communist crowd with a huge hammer and sickle unfurled above them, he presumably did not consider it election interference. Trump has also recently shared AI-generated images of himself, Elon Musk and Taylor Swift.
These images are concerning – especially given most image generators have put up guardrails against making content of real people. But it seems that Trump isn’t trying to pass the images off as real: I think this is him trying to be funny.
Over on the Trump campaign team, someone has learned how to work an AI-image generator and has become a little prompt-happy. A weird video of Trump and Elon Musk dancing together isn’t exactly an example of the kind of election-manipulating deepfake media that many disinformation commentators are worried about. It is an example of a candidate desperately trying to remain on your algorithm. AI generation just requires a few prompts and maybe a paid subscription to a generator. It’s a lot cheaper, and quicker, than hiring creatives who need to spend time ideating and creating before something is ready to publish.
AI-generated images and deepfakes are the poor man’s meme. Actual successful memes – a humorous piece of content designed to be spread online – are crafted by individuals who have adopted the language and culture of the internet, and know how to inject zeitgeisty topics into social posts designed to resonate and go viral. The combination of text with images or video is a subtle art, and it is one that Harris’s campaign team practises well. Everyone online knows about the coconut tree, and the chronically online will know about the Charli xcx accolade that “Kamala IS brat”.
By contrast, the AI posts Trump has shared are not high internet humour; they’re cheap algo-fodder. A trick he is also trialling is combining AI images with real ones in an attempt to lend them some veracity, or perhaps just to sharpen the comedy potential. In his post where he states “I accept!” alongside images suggesting Swifties are “turning to Trump”, he has combined a real photograph of a woman wearing a “Swifties for Trump” T-shirt with a satirical AI compilation of fans wearing T-shirts with the same slogan and an AI-generated image of Swift as Uncle Sam, captioned “Taylor wants you to vote for Donald Trump”. It’s the kind of content your family’s errant uncle might forward to you, that he in turn got from his mate, because they haven’t got anything better to do.
Trump doesn’t expect or need Swift’s endorsement, and so the humour is in the incredulousness of it. Posts like this aren’t about genuinely persuading audiences that Swift supports him; it’s about ensuring the intravenous drip of content into his supporters’ Facebook groups and WhatsApp conversations never runs dry. Trump has also always been a wind-up merchant. He knows Swift fans would react angrily to his post. He also knows that such rage-baiting will amplify his content on Truth Social’s and X’s algorithms – and garner coverage in the mainstream media. When people wag their fingers at him for posting content like this, some see it as righteously battling misinformation, but to his fans it looks like not getting the joke. (Of course, it is easier to understand jokes when they have at least one measly crumb of decent comedy to them.)
The idea that Harris is a communist, that Trump and Musk are dancing pals, and that even Swifties can’t escape Trump fandom aligns with the narrative of popularity, relatable light-heartedness and prestige that Trump likes to court. Narrative is far more important than truth, particularly in the US, where political ideology is so powerful it was one of the most significant factors determining whether somebody would take the Covid-19 vaccine or not. Trump’s AI posts are best understood not as outright misinformation – intended to be taken at face value – but as part of the same intoxicating mix of real and false information that has always characterised his rhetoric. Trump isn’t interested in telling the truth; he’s interested in telling his truth – as are his fiercest supporters. In his world, AI is just another tool to do this. Whether he is willing to accept the reality that he can’t make a joke, or take one, is another story.