Former President Donald Trump has shared AI-generated images falsely claiming that Taylor Swift fans support his campaign.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump shared screenshots of four X-rated posts purporting to show several young women, all of whom are wearing “Swifties for Trump” T-shirts in a variety of different styles. One of the screenshots claimed that the Swifties were supporting Trump now that Taylor Swift has cancelled her Vienna concert due to security concerns. Another image included the caption: “Taylor wants you to vote for Donald Trump.”
“I do!” Trump titled his post.
However, Trump’s post appears to contain a mix of real and AI-generated images that falsely suggest a widespread and coordinated “Swifties for Trump” movement. a tool created by the non-profit organization True Media In an effort to detect the spread of election-related deepfakes, WIRED found that many of the images shared by Trump show “substantial evidence of manipulation.”
One of the screenshots Trump shared was from an anonymous pro-Trump account with over 300,000 followers that regularly posts AI-generated images. After his post about “Swifties for Trump,” this account shared a follow-up post which said that Swifties for Trump’s original post was “satire.”
While there doesn’t appear to be an active “Swifties for Trump” campaign initiative, there is an active “Swifties for Harris” group. “We don’t represent all Swifties, but I think there’s a reason we don’t need AI to show our support for Kamala,” said Irene Kim, co-founder of Swifties for Harris. Harris Rapidshe tells WIRED.
There is at least one public Swiftie for Trump. Among the images shared by Trump on Sunday on Truth Social was a real photo of Jenna Piwowarczyk, who wore a homemade T-shirt at a Trump rally in Racine, Wisconsin, in June, bearing the words “Swifties for Trump.” Piwowarczyk now sells her homemade T-shirts on Etsy.
Trump has consistently shared AI-generated images. Last week, Trump falsely claimed that Harris’ campaign was using AI to artificially inflate crowd sizes at her rallies. Over the weekend, Trump also posted on X an AI-generated image of Harris speaking at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago with a Soviet Union flag waving over the crowd.
Disinformation experts have warned about the threat that generative AI tools pose to election integrity. This year, WIRED has already tracked dozens of examples of generative AI-created content in elections around the world.
Swift has not publicly endorsed any presidential candidate, but she did endorse President Joe Biden in 2020. She has also harshly criticized Trump: after Trump made his infamous “When the looting starts, the shooting starts” commentary in 2020 following the Black Lives Matter protests in support of George Floyd, The pop superstar criticized the then-president for having “the gall to feign moral superiority” after “stoking the fires of white supremacy and racism throughout his presidency.”
