Washington.- Taylor Swift did not endorse Donald Trump. Neither did Lady Gaga or Morgan Freeman. And Bruce Springsteen was not photographed wearing a “Keep America Trumpless” T-shirt. Fake celebrity endorsements abound in the US presidential race.
Dozens of fake testimonies from American actors, singers and athletes about Republican candidate Donald Trump and his Democratic rival Kamala Harris have proliferated on social media, many of them created by artificial intelligence image generators, according to researchers.
The fake endorsements, which come as platforms like X remove numerous barriers to misinformation, have raised concerns about their potential to manipulate voters. In August, Trump shared manipulated images showing Swift endorsing his campaign, in an apparent attempt to harness the power of the famous pop singer to sway voters ahead of the Nov. 5 election.
Some of the photos bore the hallmarks of AI-generated images, according to Hany Farid, an expert at the University of California.
Last week, Swift endorsed Harris and her running mate Tim Walz, calling the current vice president a “talented and strong leader.” The singer, who has hundreds of millions of followers on platforms like Instagram and TikTok, said the manipulated images motivated her to speak out. “They rekindled my fears about AI and the dangers of spreading misinformation,” she said. Following that announcement, Trump posted on his Truth Social network: “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT!”
Confusion and chaos
A database from the nonprofit News Literacy Project (NLP) has so far listed 70 social media posts selling fake “VIP” endorsements.
“In these polarizing times, fake celebrity endorsements can capture voters’ attention, sway their views, confirm biases and sow confusion and chaos,” said Peter Adams, senior vice president of research at NLP. The list, which grows by the day, includes viral posts including a doctored image of Lady Gaga holding a sign that reads “Trump 2024.” Other posts falsely claimed that Oscar-winning actor Morgan Freeman, a vocal critic of the Republican, said a second Trump presidency would be “good for the country.” Digitally altered photos of rocker Bruce Springsteen wearing a “Keep America Trumpless” T-shirt and actor Ryan Reynolds in support of Harris also circulated on social media sites. “The platforms have enabled it,” Adams said. “As they move away from moderation and hesitate to remove election-related misinformation, they have become an important avenue for trolls, opportunists and propagandists to reach a mass audience.”
Great facilitator
Social network X has emerged as a hotbed of political misinformation since it relaxed its content moderation rules and reinstated accounts of notorious purveyors of falsehoods, researchers say.
Elon Musk, who has endorsed Trump and has more than 198 million followers on X, has been repeatedly accused of spreading election falsehoods. Officials in charge of overseeing US elections have also urged Musk to fix X’s AI chatbot known as Grok, which can generate artificial intelligence images from text messages, after it shared misinformation. Lucas Hansen, co-founder of the nonprofit CivAI, showed how easily Grok can fabricate a fake photo of Swift fans supporting Trump with a simple message: “Outdoor rally image of woman wearing ‘Swifties for Trump’ shirt.” “If you’re looking at a relatively common situation where the people in the image are famous or fictional, Grok is certainly a great enabler” of visual misinformation, Hansen said. “As the technology develops,” it will be “increasingly difficult to identify fakes,” said Jess Terry, an intelligence analyst at Blackbird.AI.
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