DeSantis Campaign Uses AI Deepfakes in Attack Ad Against Trump, Prompting Backlash

The fake images portrayed the former president embracing Dr. Anthony Fauci

Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and his 2024 presidential campaign have come under criticism for using fake images generated with artificial intelligence (AI) depicting former President Donald Trump with Dr. Anthony Fauci.

A Twitter account called DeSantis War Room shared a video showing several images of Trump and Fauci, three of which depicted Trump hugging and kissing Fauci on the face with the caption “REAL LIFE TRUMP,” suggesting a close relationship.

“Donald Trump became a household name by FIRING countless people *on television.* But when it came to Fauci …,” the DeSantis War Room account said in the tweet.

However, the three images showing Trump hugging and kissing Fauci were later identified as fake and AI-generated by AFP Fact Check.

“These images contain many signs indicating that they were AI-generated,” Matthew Stamm, an associate professor at Drexel University who specializes in detecting falsified images and videos, told AFP.

“For example, if you look closely at Donald Trump’s hair in the top-left, bottom-middle, and bottom-right images, you can see that it contains inconsistent textures and is significantly blurrier than other nearby content such as his ears or other regions of his face.”

AFP could not independently determine the origin of the three pictures showing Trump embracing Fauci. A reverse image search for original sources did not yield any results, but AFP was able to identify the other three photos—which show Trump and Fauci simply standing or sitting near each other—as genuine images from March 2020.

“It was sneaky to intermix what appears to be authentic photos with fake photos, but these three images are almost certainly AI generated,” Hany Farid, a professor at the University of California–Berkeley and an expert in digital forensics, misinformation, and image analysis, told AFP.

Backlash Against DeSantis

The DeSantis campaign’s attempt to present fake images as real has attracted severe criticism online.

“Smearing Donald Trump with fake AI images is completely unacceptable. I’m not sharing them, but we’re in a new era. Be even more skeptical of what you see on the internet,” Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) said in a June 8 tweet.

By Naveen Athrappully

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