Get Your Waders
An image depicting former president Donald Trump wading through floodwaters alongside a fellow disaster responder went viral on social media this week.
But there’s one tiny problem: the image is an AI-generated fake, as multiple publications have confirmed.
The image, which shows Trump wearing a lifejacket and blue jeans as he marches through thigh-high waters, first picked up steam on Facebook last weekend.
And it doesn’t hold up to virtually any degree of scrutiny. Trump’s right hand is distorted, and the lettering pictured on either man’s clothing is completely illegible.
The former president has visited some areas impacted by the storm, but there are no credible reports of the candidate physically going into floodwaters in blue jeans, making it only the latest instance of highly politicized AI slop ahead of the presidential elections next month.
Slop Flood
As of publishing this article, the image has garnered over ten thousand likes on Facebook.
“I don’t think FB wants this picture on FB,” the poster wrote in a caption, implying the social media giant may have been removing the post for political reasons. “They have been deleting it.”
Despite alleged censorship, the image was shared roughly 160,000 times in just two days, according to a fact check from USA Today. (The photo is still live on Facebook, though has been flagged with an “altered photo” warning and a link to an independent, third-party fact check.)
The image quickly spread to other corners of social media, where users captioned the synthetic image with notes about how “they don’t want you to see this side of Trump” and messages to leaders to “not tell me how much you care about Americans… show me though [sic] your actions.”
The fake image of Trump is one of many AI-generated fake photos to circulate in the wake of the deadly storm, which wrought extensive damage throughout parts of Appalachia.
Further and Further Apart
Other AI-generated images of alleged hurricane devastation have depicted scenes like flooded homes, abandoned, sad-looking dogs on roofs, and men in knee-high water barbequing.
Most notably, a widely-shared AI image showing a crying young girl clutching a puppy while evacuating in a canoe has made its rounds on X-formerly-Twitter, where it’s been repeatedly shared by right-wing influencers and close Trump allies.
As far as the health of our information world goes, the apparent believability of these images is troubling. The fact that so many netizens are taking clearly AI-generated images at face value is a damning indictment of the extent of media illiteracy plaguing the US today.
More on AI and misinformation: Facebook Is Being Flooded With Gross AI-Generated Images of Hurricane Helene Devastation
