Political scientists have been sounding the alarm about deepfakes created by artificial intelligence (AI), warning that computer-generated images could fool enough people to sway the outcome of elections. But AI-generated political images don't necessarily have to be used against opponents. Data researcher/author Alice E. Marwick, writing for the conservative website The Bulwark, examines the MAGA movement's use of AI technology to depict President Donald Trump as a superhero who is larger than life.
Marwick emphasizes that as silly as these Trump images are, MAGA Republicans are using them to their political advantage.
"AI 'slop' imagery — banal pictures or videos, generally characterized by a kind of airbrushed boring realism, a lifeless surrealism, or obvious errors, produced by image generators trained on stolen stock photos, illustrations, movies, photojournalism, and Instagram selfies — has been widely embraced by the American right," Marwick explains in the Bulwark. "Researchers call its political deployment slopaganda. From Trump's mocked-up Time cover that inspired the No Kings protests to videos of James Talarico supposedly singing pro-trans musical numbers to over-the-top attack ads, the right has swiftly taken to slapped-together AI deepfakes and other generated imagery to promote candidates, push narratives, and depict opponents in humiliating ways."
The data researcher adds, "While Republicans and Democrats are growing suspicious of AI at roughly the same pace, right-wing politicians and influencers have embraced AI slop in a way that the left has not."
Trump and his MAGA allies, according to Marwick, are "heavily invested in Big Tech wares, especially crypto and AI." And AI images of Trump, she notes, are depicting him "as a hero — football player, boxer, warrior" who is "fighting against a gallery of right-wing punching bags" such as former President Barack Obama Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts), Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-New York) and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
"The Trump administration has deployed it to the hilt, sharing idealistic illustrations of white families, retro renderings of white workers, butched-up historical icons, action movie versions of immigration enforcement, Democrats as dangerous losers, and of course Trump-as-hero — Superman, the Pope, a Jedi, Jesus — all produced by AI," Marwick observes. "There is little subtext here…. genAI is used to visualize a binary good-versus-evil battle in which talking points come to life. AI solves a specific problem for propagandists: the most useful lies have no photographable evidence. No newspaper could publish a picture of Haitian immigrants eating pets, because it never happened. GenAI makes it possible to provide this 'evidence' and make it as affecting as possible."
