A.I. Is apparently poking its way into the 2024 presidential election.
A division of the Ron DeSantis campaign has tweeted a video that reportedly includes images showing Donald Trump hugging Dr. Anthony Fauci. Those images appear to be created by artificial intelligence and never occurred, AFP first reported, citing media forensic experts.
The tweet originated from a group called DeSantis War Room, which news outlet Semafor describes as “the campaign’s primary vehicle for Twitter fights with Trump’s supporters.” The video was flagged with a warning reading: “This video contains real imagery interspersed with AI-generated imagery of Trump hugging and kissing Dr. Anthony Fauci without noting they are fake.” However, there are concerns people will believe the images are real nonetheless.
The pictures, which are mixed with real images of Trump, are part of a video that contrasts Trump’s days as a reality TV star “firing” people on The Apprentice with “real life Trump” who kept Fauci on the job, even as he became a polarizing figure during the heart of the COVID-19 pandemic.
To date, the video that includes the false images has been viewed more than 8.3 million times.
The DeSantis campaign did not respond to Coins2Day’s request for comment about the video.
DeSantis has been especially critical of Fauci of late, accusing Trump of “turning the country over to [Dr. Anthony] Fauci in March 2020.” CNN reports, though, that in 2020, DeSantis praised Fauci, saying he was “really, really good and really, really helpful” and “really doing a good job.”
DeSantis and his supporters aren’t the only ones who are introducing A.I. Images and video into the 2024 campaign. Earlier this month Donald Trump Jr. Posted an A.I. Video of DeSantis where he appeared to pronounce his name as “Meatball”—a term Trump the candidate has used to describe the Florida governor.
Trump supporters denounced the video. “Smearing Donald Trump with fake AI images is completely unacceptable,” tweeted Republican Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio. And Marjorie Taylor Green tweeted, “Those fake AI campaign ads need to be taken down immediately,”
