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.”

  • Darkard@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    “I’m not a photojournalist,” Mr Kaye tells me from his radio studio.

    “I’m not out there taking pictures of what’s really happening. I’m a storyteller.”

    “I just happen to be telling fictional stories about real people, but deliberately not telling anyone.”

  • Fisk400@feddit.nu
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    10 months ago

    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.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      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.

    • CosmicTurtle@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      I’d actually like to see someone take these photos and use them the opposite way. “Look at Trump giving hand outs to Blacks!”

    • nilloc@discuss.tchncs.de
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      10 months ago

      They have zero talent. The only thing we have going for us at this point is how careless and stupid they are with these technologies.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        Trump is happy to be around any black person willing to listen to his racist tirades and still kiss his ass. Because they’re “one of the good ones.”

            • jaybone@lemmy.world
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              10 months ago

              Do black people not like Kanye?

              I don’t listen to his music so I don’t really know. Are most of his fans white? Though if they were nazis you’d think they wouldn’t be fans of a black musician. It’s all so confusing.

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        10 months ago

        You can tell it’s fake because he is interacting warmly with black people anyone.

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      Multiple hands and fingers are messed up in these pictures which gives them away. We’ll really be screwed whenever AI gets the hang of fingers. Or if people generating them become smart enough to fix it afterwards.

      • GONADS125@feddit.de
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        10 months ago

        Another giveaway is the writing on the dude’s hat (upper left). I always check the hands and any text in the image. Those are dead giveaways.

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        I enjoyed the pic (further down the article) with 3 arms. I mean it’s so obvious, and your brain says there’s something wrong, yet people still believe the bs.

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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          In this case though? Mostly white Trump voters are believing this. Pretty much everyone else realizes it’s bullshit. So it wasn’t even worth the time to make the images.

    • themeatbridge@lemmy.world
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      You can actually tell because his hand is messed up. There’s no nail on the pinky or pointer and the fingers sre blurring into her shoulder.

  • Optional@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    “Trump supporters become their own russian disinformation sources”

    BBC, do better. Keep up.

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    10 months ago

    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.

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      God, people in this country are so fucking stupid (by design). I was going to say that people like him will find out just how big a mistake electing him would be, then I realized that no matter what happens, people like this will never accept responsibility for anything.

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      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.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      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.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        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.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          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.

          • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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            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.

            • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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              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.

  • nutsack@lemmy.world
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    He could easily pose with a bunch of black people. it wouldn’t be that difficult. But maybe it would be weird

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    Look how happy Trump looks… Wait a second, he isn’t even touching his daughter. No way this is real.

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    There’s no evidence that suggests these photos were posted by Trump’s campaign, and BBC didn’t mention who posted them despite having talked to them.

    I doubt it’s just me, but when I read the headline, I assumed that Trump’s campaign posted these photos. How else would it be news worthy? “Trump supporters post AI generated photos of Trump in an attempt to garnish support for Trump” is a normal Tuesday activity for these loons.

    This “journalism” is just rage bait, in my opinion.

    • girlfreddy@lemmy.caOP
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      It does say that in the bit I copied from the article at the top of this post.

      But there’s no evidence directly linking these images to Mr Trump’s campaign.

  • Wahots@pawb.social
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    10 months ago

    His eyes are looking in different directions while his face is hanging off his body oddly. It looks like AI, lmao.

    • ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world
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      His eyes are looking in different directions while his face is hanging off his body oddly.

      You’re kind of describing the IRL Trump here.

  • SharkMommy🦈@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    I doubt people will believe this based on how he has treated minorities in the past. Although this really makes me a bit paranoid over figuring out what is real or not anymore for future use of AI for malicious intent. I worry about the lines being blurred.