The supporters of former US president, Donald Trump, have been creating and sharing fake images of black voters generated by artificial intelligence (IA) to encourage African Americans to vote Republican.
BBC Panorama discovered dozens of 'deepfakes'that showed black people supporting the president, who aspires to return to the White House in the elections at the end of this year.
Trump has openly courted Black voters, who were key to Joe Biden's 2020 election victory.
But there is no evidence that directly links these images to the Trump campaign.
The co-founder of Black Voters Mattera group that encourages blacks to vote, said that manipulated images were driving a 'strategic narrative' designed to show Trump as popular in the black community.
A creator of one of the images told the BBC: “I do not affirm that it is true.”
The fake images of black Trump supporters, generated by AIare one of the emerging disinformation trends facing the US presidential election in November.
Unlike 2016, when there was evidence of foreign influence campaigns, the AI-generated images found by the BBC they appear to have been created and shared by American voters themselves.
One of them was Mark Kaye and his team on a conservative radio show in Florida.
They created an image of Trump smiling with his arms around a group of black women at a party and shared it on Facebook, where Kaye has more than a million followers.
At first it looks real, but if you look closer, everyone's skin is too bright and they are missing fingers in the hands, some telltale signs of images created by AI.
“I'm not a photojournalist,” Kaye tells me from his radio studio.
“I'm not out there taking pictures of what's really happening. I'm a storyteller.”
Kaye had published an article about black voters supporting Trump and attached this image, giving the impression that all of these people support the former president's candidacy for the White House.
In the comments on Facebook, several users apparently believed the AI image was real.
“I'm not claiming it's true.. I'm not saying, 'Hey, look, Donald Trump was at this party with all these African-American voters. Look how much they love him!'” he said.
“If someone votes one way or another for a photo they see on a Facebook page, it's that person's problem, not the post itself.”
Another widely seen AI image found by the company's research BBC shows Trump posing with black voters on a porch.
It had originally been posted by a satirical account generating images of the former president, but only gained widespread attention when it was reposted with a new caption that falsely claimed that Trump had stopped his motorcade to meet these people.
We located the person behind the account named Shaggy, who is a committed Trump supporter living in Michigan.
“[Mis publicaciones] have attracted thousands of followers wonderful and kind-hearted Christians,” he said in messages sent to the BBC on social networks.
“When I tried to question him about the AI-generated image, he blocked me,” he explained. His publication has had more than 1.3 million viewsaccording to X.
Some users reported it, but others seemed to have believed the image was real.
They were not found manipulated images of Joe Biden similarly with voters of a particular demographic.
AI images of the president tend to show him alone or with other world leaders like the Russian president Vladimir Putin or the former American president Barack Obama.
Some are created by critics, others by supporters.
In January, he himself Democratic candidate was the victim of identity theft generated by AI.
An automated audio call, purportedly made by the president, urged voters not to attend the New Hampshire primary where he was running.
A Democratic Party supporter admitted responsibility and said he wanted to draw attention to the technology's potential for abuse.
Cliff Albright, co-founder of the Black Voters Matter campaign group, said there appears to be a resurgence of disinformation tactics aimed at the black community, as in the 2020 elections.
“There have been documented attempts to direct misinformation back at Black communities, especially younger Black voters,” he said.
AI-generated images in your office in Atlanta Georgiaa key electoral battleground state in which to convince even a small portion of the overall black vote to switch. Biden to Trump could be decisive.
A recent survey of New York Times and Sienna College found that in six key swing states, 71% of black voters would support Biden in 2024a sharp drop from the 92% nationally that helped him win the White House in the last election.
Albright said the fake images were consistent with a “very strategic narrative” pushed by conservatives – from the Trump campaign to online influencers – designed to win over black voters.
They are particularly aimed at young black men, who are believed to be more open to voting for Trump than black women.
On Monday, MAGA Incthe main political action committee backing Trump, will launch a advertising campaign targeting black voters in Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
It's aimed at voters like Douglas, an Atlanta taxi driver.
Douglas said he was primarily concerned about the economy and immigration, issues he feels Trump is more focused on.
He said Democratic messages about Trump's threat to democracy would not motivate him to vote, because he was already disillusioned with the electoral process.
The American economy is generally fine, but some voters – like Douglas – do not feel better because they have also gone through a crisis of the cost of living.
What did you think of the AI-generated image of Trump sitting on a porch with black voters? When I first showed it to him, he believed it was real.
He said it reinforced his view, shared by other Black people he knows, that Trump supports the community.
Then I revealed it was fake.
“Well, that's the thing about social media. It's very easy to fool people,” he said.
The disinformation tactics in the US presidential elections They have evolved since 2016, when Donald Trump won.
Back then, there were documented attempts by hostile foreign powers, such as Russia, to use networks of fake accounts to try to sow division and plant particular ideas.
In 2020, the focus was on local misinformation, particularly the nfalse arratives that the presidential election was stolen, which were widely shared by US-based social media users and endorsed by Trump and other Republican politicians.
In 2024, experts warn of a dangerous combination of the two.
Ben Nimmo, who until last month was responsible for countering foreign influence operations at Meta – the company that owns Facebook and Instagram – said the confusion created by deepfakes like these also opens up new opportunities for foreign governments that could try to manipulate the election.
“Anyone who has a substantial audience in 2024 needs to start thinking: How do I vet everything that's sent to me? How do I make sure that I don't unknowingly become part of some kind of foreign influence operation?” Nimmo says.
He adds that social media users and platforms are increasingly able to identify fake automated accountsso as it becomes more difficult to build an audience this way, “ops try to hijack real people” to increase the reach of divisive or misleading information.
“The best option they have is to try to get [su contenido] through an influencer. “He's anyone who has a big audience on social media,” she said.
Nimmo indicates that he was concerned that in 2024 these people, who may be willing to spread misinformation to their audiences, could become “unwitting vectors” of foreign influence operations.
These operations could share content with users, either covertly or overtly, and encourage them to post it themselves, making it appear to come from a real American voter, he said.
All major social media companies have policies to address potential influence operations, and several, such as Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, have introduced New measures to deal with the cAI generated content during the elections.
This year, leading politicians around the world have also highlighted the risks of AI-generated content.
Narratives about the theft of the 2020 election, which were shared without any evidence, spread online with simple posts, memes and algorithms, not AI-generated images or videos, and still resulted in the storming of the United States Capitol United on January 6.
This time, there are a whole new range of tools at the disposal of political supporters and provocateurs that could exacerbate tensions once again.
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BBC-NEWS-SRC: https://www.bbc.com/mundo/articles/c3g4l5xgvryo, IMPORTING DATE: 2024-03-04 20:42:03
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