Trump shares AI-generated images falsely depicting Taylor Swift endorsement
Donald Trump posted AI-generated images on Truth Social in August 2024 that falsely depicted singer Taylor Swift and her fans endorsing his presidential campaign. The images were created by or associated with the John Milton Freedom Foundation, a Texas-based nonprofit, and were labeled as satire by the social media account that originally posted them.
What happened
Donald Trump posted AI-generated images on Truth Social on August 18, 2024, depicting Taylor Swift and her fans endorsing his presidential campaign. The images included one showing Swift dressed as Uncle Sam with the headline 'Taylor Wants You to Vote for Donald Trump' and others showing young women in 'Swifties for Trump' T-shirts.
Several of the images were created by or associated with the John Milton Freedom Foundation, a Texas-based nonprofit launched the previous year that describes itself as a press freedom group. The images were originally posted on social media by a conservative account labeled '@amuse' with the text marked as 'satire' and bearing a watermark stating they were 'sponsored by the John Milton Freedom Foundation.'
Reported impact
Trump's post implied he had received an endorsement from Taylor Swift, who has not endorsed him and whose representative stated she had not made an endorsement in that election cycle after backing Joe Biden in 2020. The post spread misinformation to Trump's millions of followers on Truth Social.
Index analysis
Disinformation researchers have warned that generative AI has the ability to lower the bar for creating misleading content and threaten information around elections. After Musk's xAI company released its largely unregulated Grok image generator, there was a surge of AI content depicting political figures including Trump and Kamala Harris, with the John Milton Freedom Foundation being one of many small groups flooding social media with AI-generated content.
Classification
Sources and evidence
This record was researched and written by the Index, based on the following original reporting.