Franklin Roosevelt has mastered the use of radios. John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan were top of the game on television. And Donald Trump was the first AI Slop president.
Since January, the Trump administration has used artificial intelligence to unleash a steady stream of fake images on social media, from crocodiles in ice hats to crying members.
Earlier this week, Trump used his account on his personal social media platform Truth Social to share an AI-generated clip showing former President Barack Obama being forced into detention by the FBI. It was strange, but it fitted into his other meaningless memes. This included fake videos of various Democrats in orange prison jumpsuits as “shady bunches” and of women in bikini catching snakes with her bare hands.
There are terms for people using social media like this. Slop post. It is usually done by a 14-year-old boy, or someone who still acts like one person. It's not necessarily harmless, but most are crippling trolling.
But when the president does it, it's completely different. Even the most harmless AI-generated memes, Trump is muddying real water and encouraging his supporters not to believe everything. Did the woman in a bikini really catch a snake? Will Obama really be arrested? For Trump supporters who have soaked up these memes, the answer may not matter.
The president is assumed to be the ultimate consumer of fact, not the false producer.
Still, reality is important. The White House should be the vast machinery headquarters of intelligence reporting agencies, analysts and military strategists who come together every day to grasp what is actually happening in the world so that the president can make informed decisions. The president is assumed to be the ultimate consumer of fact, not the false producer.
Of course, that's not always the case. The president has lied and cited false evidence in the past, but they paid the price. It became a huge scandal when the president said that a US ship in the Gulf of Tonkin was attacked and that he knew nothing about the invasion at Watergate.
The incumbent president posting fake videos of the former president would have been a much bigger deal just a few years ago, but at this point we are all very tired. Trump has made his mission to condemn Obama as “treason” and to condemn everyone else for the issues he has created, in order to keep pushing the plot that left poses as the last two elections.
Obama, who normally tries to stay above the conflict, opposes this latest shock, saying through a spokesman that his office normally ignores “constant nonsense and misinformation” that comes from the Trump White House, but that the “strange allegations” of election rising ignores “idiot” and “weak attempts to distract.”
Outside of the US, fake images have long been instrumentals of dictatorship. In the Soviet Union at the time, Joseph Stalin had retouched photos to remove his political rivals, make himself look more attractive, and make the crowd look bigger than before. More modern, North Koreans' Kim Jong Il and Kim Jong Anne photographed their wounds and fine-tuned the appearance of their PR to enhance their reputation.
Not all use of the modified media is creepy. According to Walt Disney archives, the company's name was a prolific smoker who nearly died of lung cancer, but didn't want to take a picture of it with a cigarette in his hand. Over the years, he created cigarettes that were systematically removed from old Walt Disney photos to prevent children from encouraging them to adopt the habit.
These efforts took several weeks. These days, Marvel can casually insert the Red Guardian in the afternoon into archival videos of the Soviet Parade. What once was a painstaking tool for authoritarian governments is now a quick CGI moment in comic relief. This technology is becoming cheaper, easier to use and more realistic.
Not too long ago, but AI was a strange version of Will Smith Eating Spaghetti.
Not too long ago, but AI was a strange version of Will Smith Eating Spaghetti. Now, the only clue that the video is fake is the nasty handling of fingers or hanging out lettering. These issues will be resolved quickly.
There are two risks. One is that malicious power spreads fake videos that are widely believed to lead to real-world consequences. (The war has been launched with much more incredible evidence recently than you can see on social media on a daily basis.) Another thing is that people stop believing in videos entirely. The next time the video is leaking of a prisoner being tortured, or a video of a presidential candidate boasting about committing sexual assault, many Americans may shrug and say it's fake.
The world Trump supports creation is something you can't trust anyone, facts can depend on, and the truth is whatever your political side says. That world helps people in power. It only hurts the rest of us.
