According to a report by BBC Panorama, there's a concerted effort among some Donald Trump supporters to target Black voters by producing AI-generated images of Black Americans showing their enthusiasm for the leading Republican nominee.
The report details some of the fake images that have been circulating online in an effort to get more support from Black voters for Trump ahead of the 2024 election. The images show Black voters embracing the former President, who famously questioned whether Barack Obama was born in the United States. Conservative radio host Mark Kaye, who has an eponymous radio show, admitted that he and his team created some of these images so they could spread them online.
"I'm not claiming it is accurate. I'm not saying, 'Hey, look, Donald Trump was at this party with all of these African American voters. Look how much they love him!'" said Kaye. "If anybody's voting one way or another because of one photo they see on a Facebook page, that's a problem with that person, not with the post itself." The BBC report noted that several comments showed that multiple people on Facebook thought the images were real, despite several signs including missing fingers and shiny skin confirming they are generated by artificial intelligence.
One particular image showed Trump sitting on porch steps with several Black men, and the person behind the image is a major Trump supporter from Michigan. "[My posts] have attracted thousands of wonderful kind-hearted Christian followers," wrote the account that shared the images in DMs with the BBC Panorama reporter. However, they blocked the reporter when questioned about the image's authenticity.
Black Voters Matter co-founder Cliff Albright said the images show that disinformation tactics are alive and well in the 2024 election, but this time the use of AI adds a new wrinkle to the issue.
"There have been documented attempts to target disinformation to black communities again, especially younger black voters," said Albright, who called several examples of these images shown to him consistent with the "very strategic narrative" conservatives push online to garner support from Black voters.
It's not exactly a secret that Trump has attempted to court Black voters, especially with some of the dodgy comments he's made in the past. In fact, just last month he said he was more popular with Black voters because of his mugshot and growing list of indictments
"I got indicted for nothing. They were doing it because it's election interference. And then I got indicted a second time, a third time and a fourth time," he said in a speech at the Black Conservative Foundation gala last month, per the Independent. "And a lot of people said that that's why the Black people like me, because they have been hurt so badly and discriminated against. And they actually viewed me as I'm being discriminated against. It's been pretty amazing." He later said America's Black population "embraced" his mugshot "more than anybody else."
Charles Barkley was among those to call out Trump's remarks and revealed how he would respond if he saw a Black person walking around with Trump's mugshot on their t-shirt. "If I see a Black person walking around with Trump's mugshot, I'm [gonna] punch him in the face,” he said. "I will bail myself out and go celebrate. ... If I was at that conference I would have got up and walked out. That was an insult to all Black people."
