What fake images of Trump with Black voters tell us about AI disinformation

On Monday, a BBC investigation highlighted what it called an emerging disinformation trend in the 2024 U.S. presidential campaign: fake, apparently AI-generated images purporting to show Donald Trump posing with Black people. 

The story cited several images shared on X, Facebook and other platforms, suggesting they were aimed at influencing Black voters to support Trump. There was no evidence, however, that the Trump campaign was involved; at least one of the images the story cited was first shared by an obvious parody account, though other accounts later shared it without indicating it was fake. It’s also unclear just how far and wide the images spread, or how many people were deceived by them.

Mark Kaye, a conservative radio and TV host based in Florida, created one of the images referenced in the story, an image of a smiling Trump with his arms around smiling Black women. Kaye told The Technology 202 that he created the image using the AI image tool Midjourney to illustrate a Nov. 29 post about Trump’s growing support among Black voters, knowing that posts with images tend to do better on social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook and X than those without. He said the image took him “30 seconds” to create.