BBC Panorama discovered dozens of deepfakes portraying black people as supporting the former president.
Mr Trump has openly courted black voters, who were key to Joe Biden’s election win in 2020.
But there’s no evidence directly linking these images to Mr Trump’s campaign.
The co-founder of Black Voters Matter, a group which encourages black people to vote, said the manipulated images were pushing a “strategic narrative” designed to show Mr Trump as popular in the black community.
A creator of one of the images told the BBC: “I’m not claiming it’s accurate.”
Douglas said he was mainly worried about the economy and immigration - issues which he felt Trump was more focused on. He said Democratic messaging about Trump’s threat to democracy would not motivate him to vote, because he was already disillusioned with the electoral process.
And that’s the biggest issue because no matter who Black, Brown or Indigenous people vote for, nothing ever changes for them.
Kimberly Jones said it best even tho she was referring to a different kind of disengagement.
And that’s the biggest issue because no matter who Black, Brown or Indigenous people vote for, nothing ever changes for them.
Not entirely true. Under Barack Obama, black household wealth fell by 40%. It wasn’t until Trump that they were approaching recovery, and that was in large part thanks to the enormous outflow of public money during the COVID crisis.
Money that, under Joe Biden, we ratcheted back.
Its so fucking crazy to see the Republican Party as the “Fuck it, everyone gets free money!” party and the Democrats as these miserly means-test-your-baby-formula bail-out-the-banks party.
Proof that they think black people are stupid.
I’m not too worried. I think that we have already established, if you’re not voting for Joe Biden then You Ain’t Black.
Which do you think bothers black people more: That statement or Trump still claiming the Central Park Five are guilty?
How about Trump’s recent speech to so-called Black Republicans (Kimmel showed the audience was a sea of white faces): “I can only see black.” “Black is my favorite color.” “I’m just rapping to you.” Do you think that would make black people “love him” like he claims and how they wear his mugshot shirt because they are treated unfairly by the law just like him?
Do you think any of that would make most black people want to vote for Trump?
Because last time, Biden won despite having said that back in 2020. Probably, in part, because he apologized.
Which do you think bothers black people more: That statement or Trump still claiming the Central Park Five are guilty?
Depends on how heavily the “Central Park Five” story is circulated in the voting community. I might note that Joe Biden was such a close friend with Strom Thurmond, during his career, that he ended up giving the guy’s eulogy. That did not seem to impact his nomination to the VP slot under the first black president nor deter South Carolina party leaders from endorsing him in 2020.
Do you think any of that would make most black people want to vote for Trump?
I think both of these guys are dogshit when it comes to civil rights and economic prospects. Biden sponsored the (Anti-)Bankruptcy Bill of 2005, which was responsible for a more through destruction of black wealth than anything Trump managed to sign. Trump killed more black residents with his COVID response than any President in history. They’re both absolutely awful.
Probably, in part, because he apologized.
These assholes will say anything to get elected. The best thing that you can say about Biden is that his base does have enough progressive advocates that they do pull him away from the worst bits of policy. Trump’s all gas and no brakes, hard right.
But as individuals, they’re uniformly foul and awful candidates who will do nothing good for sharecroppers in Alabama or industry workers in Georgia or pregnant women in Texas.
Sorry, are you claiming that apologizing and not apologizing are the same thing?
And that black people in general aren’t aware of the Central Park Five and Trump’s involvement?
And that saying things like “black is my favorite color” to a group of black people won’t be seen as a racist pandering in a way only a racist could think of pandering?
And that claiming the legal issues black people are oppressed with are the same as him getting tried for trying to steal the election, committing fraud, defamation, etc.?
But sure, black people will definitely vote for Trump because of what Biden said and apologized for in 2020. That’s why 87% of black voters voted for Biden last time.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/02/26/trump-black-voters/
Data from Gallup, though, shows that the margin by which Black and Hispanic Americans prefer Democrats has shrunk since 2020. During Barack Obama’s presidency, Black Americans were 71 points more likely to identify as Democrats, according to Gallup’s annual data. During Trump’s presidency, the gap was 66 points. Since then, the average has been only 55 points, including a 47-point gap in 2023. Among Hispanics, the 30-point Democratic advantage during Trump’s presidency has become a 20-point edge.
What gets me about these AI bros is that they could use photoshop to fix the minor flaws like Trumps hand having the wrong color under it (apparently white hand on black skin fucks up the algorithm) but they never do.
They are such talentless hacks that even the most trivial work a real photographer do is insurmountable to them.
they could use photoshop to fix the minor flaws like Trumps hand having the wrong color under it
They could, but that would require them to understand how to use Photoshop rather than just typing in “Trump Black Campaign Popular” into a LLM and weeding out a few images that don’t look entirely surreal.
They are such talentless hacks that even the most trivial work a real photographer do is insurmountable to them.
The scary shit about AI imagining is that, eventually, folks are going to get wise and start smoothing these out (by applying actual labor to the images rather than just letting the computer do all the work).
And then you really will have folks posting “Politician In Front Of A Large Crowd of Unlikely Supporters” images that aren’t easily debunked or dismissed.
You’ll also have a ton of FUD, such that real images that have been touched up by Photoshop are going to routinely be dismissed as AI generated. So someone’s inevitably going to come through with the “Joe Biden wasn’t really at Event X” leading into “Joe Biden has been dead for 10 days and the White House won’t admit it” conspiracies. And that’s going to get very ugly relatively quickly.
