Former US president Donald Trump has inaccurately claimed an endorsement from Taylor Swift, according to a recent social media post.
The post relies on AI-generated images to suggest that the famous pop star supports the Republican candidate in his 2024 run for re-election.
Oddly enough, this is far from the first time that Swift’s fame has made her a target for AI-equipped scammers: AI deepfake tech was behind a recent scam in which Swift appeared to hock Le Creuset cookware across TikTok and Facebook.
Trump: “I Accept”
Trump posted a collection of images to his Truth Social account on Sunday night, all of which were either AI-generated or otherwise altered.
Some featured women in T-shirts reading “Swifties for Trump,” while one featured Taylor Swift herself, decked out in an Uncle Sam outfit above text calling on the viewer to “vote for Donald Trump.”
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The only words that Trump included alongside the images were “I accept!” — an apparent response to the false endorsement of his campaign from Swift.
Lol, Trump posted a collage of AI generated Taylor Swift fans wearing ‘Swifities for Trump’ T-shits, and wrote “I accept!” as if this were real.
I mean…..this is uniquely pathetic, even for Trump. pic.twitter.com/GUVXQLqzYo
— Peter Henlein (@SwissWatchGuy) August 18, 2024
Who Does Swift Endorse?
Taylor Swift hasn’t weighed in on the 2024 election just yet, but Trump might not be that accepting of her opinion, should she decide to speak up.
In 2020, Swift endorsed Joe Biden. That same year, Variety notes, she tweeted her strong disagreement with Trump’s statements regarding the George Floyd protests, writing: “After stoking the fires of white supremacy and racism your entire presidency, you have the nerve to feign moral superiority before threatening violence? ‘When the looting starts the shooting starts’??? We will vote you out in November.”
Perhaps Trump and his team were fooled by these AI images, after having forgotten about Swift’s liberal-leaning perspective. Alternatively, it seems it may be possible be that the former US president is intentionally spreading misinformation with the help of AI-generation.
AI Confusion Continues to Make Waves
Facebook is teeming with bizarre AI-generated images, termed “AI slop,” since they cost so little to produce and they can result in small payouts from the social platform.
A backlash against AI images has surfaced as well. Anti-AI advocates tend to focus on three issues: The climate-change-accelerating environmental impact of the technology, a lack of compensation for those whose work has been scraped in order to power the LLMs, and the collective corporate use of AI as leverage for laying off workers or reducing their compensation.
Just yesterday, the popular iPad design app Procreate announced an anti-AI pledge. “We’re not going to be introducing any generative AI into our products,” Procreate CEO James Cuda said. “I don’t like what’s happening to the industry, and I don’t like what it’s doing to artists.”
Now, Taylor Swift is the most recent artist having a bad time — thanks, at least in part, to AI.
