Trump shares AI images of Taylor Swift, her fans alleging endorsement
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A minimum of 15 photos shared by both Donald Trump and his supporters on X are artificial intelligence-generated images.
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Stickers with a picture of Taylor Swift and the words "SWIFT Make America Shimmer" are on sale at the gift shop in the Supreme Court of the United States on Monday, on August 12, 2024. (AP)
US Republican contender Donald Trump posted a series of pictures on Truth Social on Sunday night that seemed to show Taylor Swift fans sporting T-shirts that said "Swifties for Trump."
A fake "Uncle Sam" poster with Swift's face and the words "Taylor wants you to vote for Donald Trump" was one of the pictures, and "I accept!" was Trump's response. Most of the women portrayed in the pictures Trump published aren't real, but two of them include a real woman who supports him.
A minimum of 15 of them are artificial intelligence-generated images.
The photos that Trump shared were first uploaded to X by his supporters. On its Substack blog, one of those accounts also published numerous tutorials on the use of generative AI technologies.
That same user on X admitted that the photos Trump had uploaded from them were AI-generated.
The new pictures are part of a social media campaign launched over the weekend by certain pro-Trump accounts in an attempt to imply that Swift's supporters, who backed Biden and publicly denounced Trump in 2020, are gradually shifting their allegiance to Trump.
There isn't much proof that this is the case for a sizable portion of Swift's followers, referred to as "Swifties".
Read next: Biden turns to Taylor Swift for PR boost amid record low rating
One of the accounts wrote, “There is no Swifties For Trump movement — but there should be."
Additionally, AI graphics that falsely depict Democratic-leaning voter blocs, such as Black voters, endorsing Trump have been shared by other pro-Trump accounts.
Two of the images Trump shared on Sunday were of real people and featured a Liberty University college student who had a political communications internship this summer, according to her LinkedIn account.
Her "Swifties for Trump" social media post went unnoticed with less than 1,000 views until it was retweeted by prominent pro-Trump accounts and eventually by Trump himself.
In an attempt to strengthen the narrative that Swifties are organizing in large numbers to support Trump, the same pro-Trump accounts have also reposted TikToks from female Swift supporters who claim to be Trump supporters. But these videos received far fewer views on TikTok than when Trump and his highly followed supporters reshared them.
While Swift hasn't yet endorsed a candidate for president in 2024, some of her followers have come together to lend their support to Kamala Harris, the vice president.
The organization’s co-founder, Irene Kim, relayed to NBC News in a statement, “We do not represent every Swiftie, but I think there is a reason we don’t need AI to show our support for Kamala."
It's unclear whether the Sunday post or the pictures break any laws pertaining to likeness, publicity, or AI. Tennessee, the home state of Swift, revised its laws to prohibit the unapproved use of AI to impersonate someone in March. The account that first released the "Uncle Sam" poster with Swift's face did not classify the images as parody, even though it admitted that they were AI-generated images.
David Greene, the civil liberties director and senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told NBC News that this situation, which is not exclusive to AI-generated content, could overlap with publicity laws that protect people from unauthorized commercial use of their likenesses.
In an email, Greene wrote, “This is probably a stronger case than many others because false endorsement is at the heart of those claims, though we typically see that in terms of product endorsements,” adding, “This was just good old low-tech lying.”
