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POLITICAL COMMENTATORS RARELY ponder over missing reflections, deformed hands, and digital image metadata, but recent days have seen accusations by former US president Donald Trump that Vice President Kamala Harris has used AI-generated images to promote her presidential campaign.
Trump accused Harris of using artificial intelligence technology to fabricate a picture showing a large crowd of supporters at an airport rally in Detroit, Michigan.
However, the image he claimed was fake has no signs of being AI-generated and is corroborated by numerous other images and videos — some broadcast live — showing the same scenes.
Despite this, Trump supporters have spread AI-generated images purportedly showing a Harris rally in an attempt to suggest that accusations like Trump’s had been correct. There is no evidence that the fake images were ever shared by the Harris campaign, or any other prominent Democrats.
“Has anyone noticed that Kamala CHEATED at the airport? There was nobody at the plane, and she ‘A.I.’d’ it, and showed a massive ‘crowd’ of so-called followers, BUT THEY DIDN’T EXIST!” the Republican nominee wrote on 11 August in the first of a series of posts on his Truth Social platform.
“She was turned in by a maintenance worker at the airport when he noticed the fake crowd picture, but there was nobody there, later confirmed by the reflection of the mirror like finish on the Vice Presidential Plane. She’s a CHEATER.”
Trump added in another post: “There was nobody there!”
The allegation comes as the former president fights an election that was transformed by President Joe Biden’s decision to quit the race and endorse Harris, his vice president.
The claim about Harris’s 7 August rally had reverberated throughout right-wing and conspiratorial social media circles before reaching Trump, who shared an X post from conservative commentator Chuck Callesto, honing in on the reflection of the side of the plane as evidence of fakery. Similar posts claiming the plane’s reflection proves the crowd was fake spread across other platforms, including Facebook.
Rapid advances in AI have accelerated the spread of fake images and other disinformation online during a year of consequential elections worldwide.
But the claim that Harris faked the crowd in Detroit is false. The audience comprised thousands of people, including an AFP video journalist who captured footage of supporters who packed an airfield hangar and spilled onto the tarmac to see Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz.
Live shots and photos from numerous other media outlets and attendees from a range of angles also showed the scale of the audience that Trump claimed did not exist.
Some Democrats at the rally shared their own photos from the venue and poked fun at Trump for his posts.
”I’m honored that whoever made the AI image of 15,000 excited Democrats welcoming @kamalaharris and @tim_walz to Detroit was kind enough to include me at the lectern,” Lavora Barnes, chair of the Michigan Democratic Party, wrote in one such post on X.
AFP contacted the Trump campaign for comment, but no response was forthcoming.
The specific photo in question appears to have been first posted by a Harris campaign official who wrote on X that he received it from another staffer.
The Harris campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment from AFP journalists.
But the campaign shared an original copy of the staffer’s photo — which appears dimmer than the high-exposure version circulating online and highlighted by Trump — with the BBC, telling the British broadcaster it was “not modified by AI in any way”.
The BBC reported that the metadata on the campaign’s photo confirmed it was taken around the time of Harris’s arrival at the 7 August event.
“This is an actual photo of a 15,000-person crowd for Harris-Walz in Michigan,” the campaign’s official rapid response page wrote on X.
The University of California-Berkeley’s Hany Farid, a digital forensics expert, told AFP in a 12 August direct message that he suspects “the only alteration was some simple brightness/contrast and perhaps sharpening”.
Farid also said two models designed to identify traces of AI uncovered no evidence the technology was used.
Drexel University’s Matthew Stamm also analysed the image for AFP and said in an 12 August email that his specialized software “did not find any evidence that the image was generated by AI”.
Some of the spectators in the photo appear to also be visible in other images from the rally.
Experts said the crowd is likely not directly mirrored in the side of the aircraft because of its distance from the audience and the angle of its hull — not because nobody was present, as Trump claimed.
“For a convex surface like the body of the plane, objects above and below the surface are most visible and dominate the reflection,” Farid said. “Objects that are further away and more centered are compressed and less visible.”
Videos and photos from the scene show the audience was restricted by barricades.
“The crowd appears to be set back from the plane by a significant distance,” Stamm said. “Because of the combination of the imaging angle and the fact that the hull of the plane is curved, the reflection on the hull of the plane and the engine will show the ground immediately in front of the plane.”
Farid also noted that the plane appears rotated relative to the viewer.
“Because the camera is so far away, even a small rotation of the reflecting surface will cause what is reflected to move significantly,” he said.
So, does this mean that images showing supporters of Harris in Detroit that you might see online are real? In an odd twist, the answer is: no.
Trump supporters have added a further complication by sharing actual AI-generated images alongside the real photos, often with mocking descriptions to imply that Democrats are claiming the AI images are real.
There is no evidence that the Harris campaign or any other prominent Democrat supporters have shared these AI-generated images.
“Man with 4 arms and 8 fingers said Kamal doesn’t AI pictures during her rallies” reads an image posted to the Reddit group r/TheBidenshitshow the same day that Trump’s post was published on Truth Social.
The Reddit post, which includes a total of 15 images, also includes the one real image that Trump had suggested was fake among 14 others that show supporters with extra limbs, deformed faces, and banners with gibberish writing on them — telltale signs that they were AI-generated
“They are just gonna deny it, as if all lefts are deformed ugly looking mutant burned freaks,” one of the top comments on that thread reads.
Other posts on X.com also imply that this was an image released by the Harris campaign, including one posts that appears to be the earliest, racking up more than ·557,900 views, according to metrics on that site.
“The Harris/Walz rally last night had an electricity that I’ve never seen before,” reads the post, published on 10 August, after claims about AI-images spread online but before Trump had posted about them. “The right hates this.”
The account appears be be satirical and regularly posts edited and AI-generated images of politicians, nevertheless, comments to the tweet suggest that many people were taken in by the ruse and shared the pictures as if they had been an attempt at deception by Democracts.
Earlier this year, fake pictures of Donald Trump posing with groups of black people were shared widely by Trump supporters online, though not by anyone directly connected with his campaign.
Many of the AI-generated images showed Trump surrounded by black women, a demographic Trump had been courting. About 70% of black voters say that they would vote for Harris over Trump, according to one July poll.
Most recent national polls show Harris currently leading Trump 48% to 47%, as well as taking the lead in the swing states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvanian, according to the The New York Times.
With reporting from AFP
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