- Written by Marianna Spring
- BBC Panorama and Americast
image source, AI generated image
This image was created using AI by a radio host and his team and is one of dozens of fakes depicting black Trump supporters
Donald Trump supporters have been creating and sharing fake AI-generated images of black voters to encourage African Americans to vote Republican.
BBC Panorama uncovered dozens of deepfakes depicting black people as supporting the former president.
Trump has openly courted black voters, who were key to Joe Biden's 2020 election victory.
However, there is no evidence directly linking these images to Trump's campaign.
The co-founder of Black Voters Matter, a group that encourages black people to vote, said the doctored image was pushing a “strategic narrative” to show Mr Trump was popular in the black community.
The creator of one of the images told the BBC: “We don't claim it's accurate.”
Fake images of black Trump supporters generated by artificial intelligence (AI) are part of a new disinformation trend ahead of November's US presidential election.
Unlike in 2016, when there was evidence of a foreign influence campaign, the AI-generated images discovered by the BBC appear to have been created and shared by US 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 arm in arm with a group of black women at a party, which Kaye shared on Facebook, where she has more than 1 million followers.
At first glance, it looks real, but upon closer inspection, you'll see telltale signs of an AI-generated image, such as everyone's skin being a little too shiny and the fingers on people's hands missing.
“I'm not a photojournalist,” Kaye told me from a radio studio.
“I'm not taking pictures of what's actually happening. I'm a storyteller.”
Radio presenter Mark Kaye told the BBC that whether voting was influenced by AI images was a personal matter.
He posted an article about black voters supporting Trump and attached this image to it, giving the impression that all black voters supported the former president's bid for the White House.
In Facebook comments, some users seemed to believe the AI image was real.
“I'm not claiming that's accurate. I'm not claiming that it's accurate. 'Hey, look, Donald Trump was at this party with all the African-American voters. Look how much I love you!’ I’m not saying that,” he said.
“If someone votes because of a photo they saw on a Facebook page, that's their problem, not the post itself.”
Another widely viewed AI image uncovered by the BBC's investigation shows Trump posing with black voters on his front porch. This post was originally posted by a satirical account that generated an image of the former president, but was reposted with a new caption that falsely claims the president stopped his motorcade to meet these people. It attracted widespread attention.
image source, AI generated image
The image was widely viewed on social media with the caption that Trump had stopped his motorcade to pose with the men.
We tracked down the person behind the account Shaggy, an avid Trump supporter living in Michigan.
”[My posts] “We have attracted thousands of wonderful, kind-hearted Christians,” he said in a message to the BBC on social media.
He blocked me when I tried to ask him about the AI-generated images. According to social media site X, his posts have been viewed more than 1.3 million times. While some users criticized it, others seemed to believe the image was real.
We did not find any images of Joe Biden that were manipulated to match specific demographics of voters. His AI images of presidents tend to feature the president alone or with other world leaders, such as Russian President Vladimir Putin and former US President Barack Obama.
Some were created by critics, others by supporters.
In January, the Democratic candidate himself became a victim of AI-generated impersonation.
An automated voice call purportedly made by the president urged voters to skip the New Hampshire primary, where he is running. Democrats acknowledged responsibility and said they wanted to raise awareness about how the technology could be misused.
Cliff Albright, co-founder of the campaign group Black Voters Matter, said there appears to be a resurgence of disinformation tactics targeting Black communities like in the 2020 election.
“There are documented attempts to once again target the Black community, particularly young Black voters, with disinformation,” he said.
Cliff Albright, who runs an organization that encourages black people to vote, says young black voters are being targeted by misinformation.
I showed him the AI-generated photo in his office in Atlanta, Georgia. It is a key election battleground state, and persuading even a small portion of the overall black vote to switch from Biden to Trump could be decisive.
A recent poll by The New York Times and Siena College found that 71% of black voters in six key battleground states said they would support Biden in 2024, and across the U.S., which helped Biden win in the last election. This was a significant drop from 92%.
Albright said the fake images are consistent with a “very strategic narrative” pushed by conservatives, from the Trump campaign to online influencers, to win over Black voters. It specifically targets young black men, who are believed to be more willing to vote for Trump than black women.
On Monday, MAGA, a major pro-Trump political action committee, will launch an ad campaign targeting black voters in Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
It's targeting voters like Douglas, an Atlanta taxi driver.
Justin Webb and Marianna Spring travel from the frozen plains of Iowa to the battleground state of Georgia to explore the enduring appeal of Donald Trump and put an unprecedented American election year into perspective.
Watch now BBC iPlayer (UK only) and Monday 4 March at 20:00 on BBC One (20:30 in Wales and Northern Ireland)
Douglas said he is primarily concerned about the economy and immigration, which he feels President Trump places more emphasis on. He said Democrats' messaging about Trump's threat to democracy will not motivate them to vote because he is already disillusioned with the electoral process.
While the U.S. economy is generally strong, some voters like Douglas aren't feeling better because they're also experiencing a cost-of-living crisis.
What did he think of the AI-generated image of President Trump sitting on his front porch with a black voter? The first time I showed it to him, he believed it was real. He said it confirmed a view shared by his black acquaintances that President Trump is supportive of the community.
It was then revealed that it was fake.
“Well, that's the thing about social media. It's so easy to fool people,” he said.
Taxi driver Douglas, who saw one of the AI fakes, says on social media: 'It's so easy to fool people.'
Disinformation tactics in the US presidential election have evolved since Donald Trump won in 2016. At the time, there were documented attempts by hostile foreign powers, such as Russia, to use networks of fraudulent accounts to sow division and instill specific ideas.
In 2020, the focus was on homegrown disinformation, particularly the false narrative that the presidential election was stolen, which were widely shared by US-based social media users and by Trump and other Republican politicians. Supported.
In 2024, experts are warning of a dangerous combination of the two.
image source, AI generated image
At first glance, some voters may miss the telltale signs of an AI-generated image.Images may also contain extra weapons
Ben Nimmo, who until last month served as head of countering foreign influence operations at Facebook and Instagram company Meta, said the confusion caused by such fakes could also be a threat to foreign governments seeking to manipulate elections. He said it opens up new opportunities.
“If you have a large audience in 2024, you're wondering how to vet what's being sent to you, and how to make sure you're not unknowingly complicit in some kind of foreign influence operation. “I'll have to start thinking about it,” he said.
Nimmo said social media users and platforms are increasingly able to identify fake, automated accounts, making it difficult to build an audience in this way, so they don't provide divisive or misleading information. “The operators are trying to bring in real people” to expand the reach of the information, he said.
“Their best bet is to try and land.” [their content] Through influencers. It's someone who has a large audience on social media,” he said.
In 2024, Nimmo said, these people who may seek to spread misinformation to ready-made audiences could become “unwitting vectors” of foreign influence operations. He said he was concerned.
These operations appear to come from genuine U.S. voters, he said, because they may covertly or overtly share content with users and encourage them to post themselves.
All major social media companies have policies in place to address potential influence operations, and some, including Facebook and Instagram owner Meta, have announced plans to address AI-generated content during elections. We are introducing new measures to
This year, leading politicians around the world also highlighted the risks of AI-generated content.
Stories that the 2020 election was stolen were shared without any evidence, spread online through simple posts, memes, and algorithms rather than AI-generated images and videos, and yet the Jan. 6 federal sparked the Capitol riot.
This time, political partisans and provocateurs have entirely new tools available to them that could once again stoke tensions.
