Trump falsely claims Kamala Harris ‘programmed’ rally attendance

Former President Donald Trump baselessly accused Vice President Kamala Harris of using artificial intelligence to make the crowd at a rally appear larger than it actually was.

“Has anyone noticed Kamala is CHEATING at the airport?” Trump wrote on Truth Social, pointing to an Aug. 7 photo of an airport tarmac in Michigan showing Air Force Two and a enormous wave of people with Harris-Walz signs. “There was no one on the plane and she was ‘AI’d’ and showed a huge ‘crowd’ of so-called supporters BUT THEY WERE NOT THERE!”

Local news site MLive he wrote that about 15,000 people attended the rally at Detroit Metro Airport and “the crowd spilled onto the tarmac and cheered as Air Force Two arrived.” Other angles show enormous crowds and fact-checking site Snopes even ran the Trump-enhanced image through AI-powered detection tools, which determined it was likely a real image.

The image Trump referenced also does not appear to come directly from Harris’ campaign sites. According to local outlet in New York NY1Democratic Super PAC video editor and former Biden campaign official was apparently among the first to publish it by posting it online at 10:01 PM on the day of the event. (That was then common (Widely commented on by various Internet users.) The Trump and Harris campaigns did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

As social media platforms race to find a way to combat actual AI deception, and to distinguish it from mere retouching, Trump is using the technology’s existence as an simple way to discredit reality. It’s a tactic with years of precedent at this point. In 2021, a judge allowed a lawyer for Kyle Rittenhouse — then a teenager who shot and killed three men in Kenosha, Wisconsin, during protests against police violence — to argue that using the pinch-to-zoom function on an iPad video would manipulate the footage with AI. Elon Musk’s lawyers made a less successful version of the “AI’d” argument last year, arguing that Musk’s earlier statements about Tesla’s safety could have been “deepfake videos.”

The AI ​​accusation is also part of a recent line of attack on Democrats, claiming that the last-minute candidate switch from President Joe Biden to Harris is flawed. Trump’s post on Truth Social claims that Harris “should be disqualified because creating a false image is ELECTION INTERFERENCE.” (In fact, agencies are still figuring out how to regulate AI-generated political ads.)

IN write to X on Sunday, Harris’ campaign shared a post from Trump accusing them of creating a “fake ‘crowd.'” “1) This is a real photo of a crowd of 15,000 at Harris-Walz in Michigan,” Harris’ campaign wrote. “2) Trump hasn’t campaigned in an undecided state in over a week… Low energy?”