The photos are evocative. Former President Donald Trump is yelling, writhing, fighting as he’s detained by police. A swarm of officers surrounds him. His youngest wife and eldest son scream in protest. He’s in a mist—is that pepper spray?—as he charges across the pavement.
The photos are also… off. The pepper spray emerges, ex nihilo, from behind Trump’s head and in front of his chest. Behind him, a storefront sign says “WORTRKE.” In one image, a cop’s arm is outside its empty sleeve. In another, Trump has only half a torso. The officers’ badges are all gibberish. “PIULIECE” reads a cop’s hat behind a grotesque Melania Trump-like creature from uncanny valley.
All of this, you see, is fake. The photos are not photos at all but deepfakes, the work of generative AI. They’re a digital unreality created by Midjourney, a program similar to the better-known DALL-E 2 image generator and GPT-4 chatbot. And, for American politics, they’re a portend of things to come.
Source: The Daily Beast
275 total views, 1 views today
