- Former President Trump falsely accused Kamala Harris’s rally photo of being AI-generated to inflate crowd size.
- Experts, including UC Berkeley’s Hany Farid, debunked the claims, confirming the image was authentic.
- The incident highlights growing concerns over the impact of AI on truth and political discourse.
Things were heating up in the race for the next United States president as former President Trump made some hasty ‘AI’ accusations against his running mate. Current Vice President Kamala Harris held a rally Wednesday, August 7th at the Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport. While the event was widely covered by the media, being only one day after announcing her vice president nominee Tim Walz, there was one viral photo that put everything up for question.
Trump falsely claimed that the rally photos were “AI Generated” to exaggerate the size of her outing. The Kamala campaign suggested that there were around 15,000 people in attendance. Lavora Barnes, chairwoman of the Michigan Democratic Party clapped back on ‘X’ saying, ““That AI crowd was really loud, my ears just stopped ringing from their imaginary cheering.” The photo in question was originally posted to ‘X’ and was not only scrutinized by former President Trump but also several American citizens. Main points of argument had to do with the reflection of the plane, the views on the phone screens and the hands in the crowd. Hany Farid, a professor at UC Berkeley who specializes in ‘deepfake detection’ received numerous requests to analyze the image but claimed he found no evidence the image was AI generated.
As numerous other images and videos from the event surfaced in the media in the following days, all rumors of the photo being AI were debunked. With the level of accuracy and power that artificial intelligence has advanced to in the past few years, we are almost completely unable to tell the difference between what is real and what is computer generated. This leaves a growing concern for not only the parties involved, but for the world as we try to navigate the future with these advanced technologies.
