Donald Trump is invoking AI in the most dangerous possible way

Donald Trump’s latest controversial post made use of a word that we have not yet heard much in political debate, but is likely to become more common. “She ‘A.I.’d’ it,” he wrote on Truth Social.

It was part of a long post in which he accused Kamala Harris and her campaign of “cheating”. He falsely claimed – despite the evidence – that she had used artificial intelligence to create a “fake crowd picture” that suggested there was a large turnout when in fact “there was nobody there”.

Mr Trump even pointed to what he suggested was evidence. The cheating was “later confirmed by the reflection of the mirror like finish of the Vice Presidential plane”, he posted.

The claims are false: videos and bystander reports indicate that Ms Harris really did bring a huge crowd to the rally. But Mr Trump’s post points to a very real concern about the growing use of artificial intelligence.

While people have spent much time worrying – and attempting to avoid – the potential use of fake images in everything from political campaigns to advertising, there has been less concern about what that growing concern might do to our trust in real images. Perhaps the biggest and largely overlooked danger of artificial intelligence is that it will stop us from believing anything at all.

It is not clear what Mr Trump intended to do with his post, on Truth Social, in which he tried to accuse Ms Harris of cheating more broadly as well as creating fake images. But it was clear that he meant his accusation to apply to more than just those pictures of Ms Harris and her plane.

He suggested that she had faked other crowds. And he suggested that anyone who would create fake image “will cheat at ANYTHING”.

This may well be the eventual effect of accusations like