Trump, Deep Artificial Intelligence, and Flooding the Disinformation Zone
By Mark Sullivan | Published: 2025-11-03 20:45:00 | Source: Fast Company – technology
In late September, President Donald Trump posted a racist tweet generated by artificial intelligence video It depicts House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries standing in front of the podium, wearing a sombrero and mustache, while Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer says disparaging things about Democrats.
In mid-October, the Ontario government aired an announcement Anti-tariff declaration In the United States, it shows a clip of Ronald Reagan stressing the futility of imposing tariffs on foreign goods. Trump wrongly accused the video of being an AI deepfake – and claimed that Reagan was in fact supporting tariffs.
While these two incidents — the first being misinformation by AI, the second being another video being labeled as such — may seem unrelated, they are in fact largely connected. This is more than just Trump lying and assuming others are lying too. In fact, his spread of deepfakes and his accusation of deepfakes work together as part of the same disinformation strategy.
The first part of the strategy is to distribute large amounts of lies and half-truths via campaign speeches, social media, ads, or television appearances. The second part is continuing to label actual news stories from legitimate outlets as “fake news.” Let us remember what Steve Bannon told writer Michael Lewis in 2018: “The real opposition is the media,” Trump’s advisor said, adding, “and the way to deal with it is to flood the region with filth.”
AI-generated deepfakes represent a dangerous technological upgrade on the same disinformation base. In Schumer’s videos, Trump’s circle spread the narrative that power-hungry Democrats want to provide health care benefits to illegal immigrants. In the case of the Ontario brawl, Trump described a credible video as an AI fake. As Trump and his allies create more of their own fake videos, further polluting the information space, people are more likely to believe the real videos are fake, too.
“(A) skeptical public will be willing to doubt the veracity of real audio and visual evidence,” legal experts Daniel Cates Citron and Robert Chesney wrote in a 2019 law review. condition. “Suspicions can be drawn against the original content as well as against the adulterated content,” a problem Citron and Chesney call “the liar’s payoff.” The problem may get worse as AI models improve and generate videos that are indistinguishable from real videos captured on camera.
As the line between truth and lies blurs, news consumers searching for objective truth eventually feel exhausted. For those who want to create an environment in which misinformation thrives, this is a very good outcome – and not a new idea at all. Hannah Arendt wrote in her book: “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not a convinced Nazi or a convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction no longer exists.” The origins of totalitarianismher 1951 book chronicling the rise of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin.
Until now, much of the AI-generated video produced or shared by Trump and his allies — such as the recent video of the president in a fighter jet dropping feces on thousands of “No Kings” protesters — has been quite clearly fake. Many of them repeat the classic “own the libs” meme. But the administration was moving toward deepfakes designed to deceive
In mid-October, Trump loyalists on the National Republican Senatorial Committee, hoping to blame Democrats for the ongoing shutdown, produced a deepfake video. video Schumer is shown saying “Every day gets better for us,” words taken from the context of a printed interview Schumer conducted with Punchbull News. The implication is that Democrats are only interested in scoring political points during the confrontation, not in the harm it has done – and will continue to do – to ordinary Americans.
All that separates this video from being a deepfake is the fact that the senator (generated by artificial intelligence) is shown uttering his own words. At the end of the video, Schumer smiles widely, suggesting that he is ironically enjoying the lockdown. That smile is all artificial intelligence.
While some countries, incl ca, Minnesota, Texasand Washingtonadded specific language prohibiting AI deepfakes to their election laws, and the Federal Election Commission (FEC) did not follow suit. The Federal Election Commission considered passing a new regulation specifically targeting deceptive AI-generated content in 2023, but The idea was dropped In favor of relying on existing rules on deceptive campaign media, fearing that widespread bans on AI-generated content may be outside their purview, and that any rulemaking may fail to address existing legal challenges to free speech rights.
And on the Hill, Democratic Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar explicitly warned against AI-generated deepfakes in the 2024 election. “Like any emerging technology, AI has great opportunities but also great risks,” she said at a hearing in April of 2024. “We have to put the rules in place,” she said at a hearing in April of 2024. In 2024, Klobuchar and Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski co-sponsored the AI Transparency in Elections Act, which sought to Requiring a disclaimer for political ads that use images or audio generated or modified by artificial intelligence, the bill never made it out of committee
Many artificial intelligence companies It has included in its terms of service rules against using its generative models to create synthetic media that imitate real people without their consent. Most used some form of visible watermark or hidden data to indicate that the image was generated by artificial intelligence. However, sources say it’s not difficult to find an open source model that doesn’t use any of these safeguards.
Meanwhile, numerous Experts They expressed concern that as AI tools mature and become more accessible, more people (including foreign actors) have the resources they need to actively spread falsehoods about political issues, issues, candidates, or campaigns. Harvard 2024 reconnaissance It found that 83% of respondents (n=1,000) were concerned that AI could be used to spread false election-related information.
In close congressional elections next year, and especially in the presidential election in 2028, all restrictions may go out the window. Do you think it won’t go that far? According to The Washington PostTrump made more than 30,000 false or misleading statements during his first term. He was willing to see a mob at the Capitol and mutilate it if it meant staying in office
For Trump, the truth is no better than a lie, no matter what form it takes. Both are just a means to more power.
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(tags for translation)Artificial Intelligence
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