Donald Trump amplified a wave of false social media claims that his opponent Kamala Harris used artificial intelligence to fabricate a picture of her supporters at a Michigan rally last week — an allegation disproved by photos and videos.
“Has anyone noticed that Kamala CHEATED at the airport? There was nobody at the plane, and she ‘A.I.’d’ it, and showed a massive ‘crowd’ of so-called followers, BUT THEY DIDN’T EXIST!” the Republican presidential nominee wrote in the first of a series of posts Sunday on his Truth Social platform.
“There was nobody there!” he added in a second post.
Live footage and photos from numerous media outlets, including AFP, showed the crowd of supporters, who packed an airfield hangar and spilled onto the tarmac to see Harris and her freshly announced running mate Tim Walz.
The photo appeared to have been first posted by a Harris campaign official who received it from another staffer.
“This is an actual photo of a 15,000-person crowd for Harris-Walz in Michigan,” the campaign’s official rapid response page wrote on social media platform X.
The campaign shared an original copy of the image — which appears dimmer than the high-exposure version available online and highlighted by Trump — with the BBC, telling the British broadcaster that it was “not modified by AI in any way.”
Drexel University digital forensic expert Matthew Stamm analyzed the image for AFP and said his specialized software “did not find any evidence that the image was generated by AI.”
The University of California-Berkeley’s Hany Farid also told AFP two models designed to identify traces of AI uncovered no evidence the technology was used in the image.
The false claim circulated on right-wing and conspiratorial social media circles before reaching Trump, who shared a post from conservative commentator Chuck Callesto focusing on the lack of a reflection of the crowd on the side of the plane.
Experts said the crowd was likely not directly mirrored because of the distance between the aircraft and the audience and the angle of the reflection.
“The reflection on the hull of the plane and the engine will show the ground immediately in front of the plane,” Stamm told AFP.
The Trump campaign did not respond to requests for comment.
