Trump posts deepfakes of Swift, Harris and Musk in effort to shore up support

Donald Trump shared several AI-generated images of Taylor Swift and her fans vowing their support for his presidential campaign on Sunday, reposting them with the caption “I accept!” on his Truth Social platform. The deepfakes are part of a slew of images made with artificial intelligence that the former president has disseminated in recent days straddling the line between parody and outright election disinformation.

The AI-made images Trump shared over the weekend depict a series of young, smiling women in “Swifties for Trump” T-shirts, as well as one that shows Swift dressed as Uncle Sam encouraging people to vote for the Republican presidential nominee. Each image is a screenshot from X, formerly known as Twitter, and was originally posted by rightwing accounts with a history of sharing misinformation. Swift has not endorsed Trump.

Trump’s posts come days after he also shared an AI-generated image that depicted Kamala Harris holding a communist military rally at the Democratic national convention, as well as a deepfake video of him dancing with the X owner, Elon Musk, who has endorsed him. Trump’s embrace of AI-generated imagery threatens to further cloud an already murky information ecosystem around the 2024 presidential election. The former president routinely promotes falsehoods and conspiracy theories.