Fake images of black Trump supporters, generated by artificial intelligence (AI), are one of the emerging disinformation trends ahead of the US presidential election in November, according to the BBC.
BBC Panorama discovered dozens of ‘deepfakes portraying black people as supporting the former president’.
However, there was no evidence directly linking these images to Trump’s campaign.
BBC Panorama’s Marianna Spring writes that the creator of one of the images told the BBC: ‘I’m not claiming it’s accurate.’
Mark Kaye and his team at a conservative radio show in Florida created an image of Trump smiling with his arms around a group of black women at a party and shared it on Facebook, where Kaye has more than one million followers.
Spring writes: ‘At first it looks real, but on closer inspection everyone’s skin is a little too shiny and there are missing fingers on people’s hands – some tell-tale signs of AI-created images.’
Kaye told Spring: ‘I’m not a photojournalist. I’m not out there taking pictures of what’s really happening. I’m a storyteller.’
In the comments on Facebook, several users appeared to believe the AI image was real, Spring writes.
But Kaye said: ‘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!”
‘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.’