How AI-generated memes are changing the 2024 election

Last week, Donald Trump posted on Truth Social an artificial intelligence-generated image of Taylor Swift in an Uncle Sam outfit, falsely claiming she had endorsed him. The image is clearly fake and was accompanied by other depictions, some also apparently AI-generated, of young women in T-shirts reading “Swifties for Trump.”

In fact, Swift has not endorsed any candidate for president this year, and she endorsed Joe Biden over Trump in 2020.

Days later, Trump acknowledged the images weren’t real.

“I don't know anything about them other than somebody else generated them, I didn't generate them. Somebody came out, they said,' Oh, look at this.' These were all made up by other people,” he told Fox Business in response to a question about whether he was worried about a lawsuit from Swift.

“AI is always very dangerous in that way,” he continued, saying he has also been the subject of fakes implying he’s made endorsements he never did.

But in reality, Trump himself has repeatedly shared AI-generated content on social media in the latest example of how artificial intelligence is showing up in the 2024 election. The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Typically, Trump reshares posts from his supporters who have embraced new tools that make it easy to turn quick text descriptions into images, both plausible and fantastic.

The subject of the images they create is often Trump himself: astride a lion, as a bodybuilder, performing at a rock concert with a Star Wars stormtrooper (really).

Other times, they mock or smear his opponents — like a recent fake image he shared of what appeared to Vice President Harris addressing a Soviet-style rally, complete with a communist hammer-and-sickle flag.

“One thing AI in