As Trump dominates headlines, be careful with fake reality

How Fake Are the Fake Social Media Images of Donald Trump? A Comment on the Washington Post’s ‘Fake Photos of the Trump Family’

The Washington Post says that the fake photos of Trump being arrested were made by an Artificial Intelligence art generator to make a joke out of it.

What can viewers do to tell the difference between real pictures and fake ones, if there is a former president in the picture?

The thread focuses on the first object described in the thread, the Trump family members, with everything else having more flaws than it actually does, as he said over email. Look outside of the image’s focal point. Does the rest of the image appear to be an afterthought?

While the newer version of Midjourney and Stable Diffusion are making progress, there still are a lot of small mistakes in the images that are fake. As AI art grows in popularity, many artists point out that the algorithms still struggle to replicate the human body in a consistent, natural manner.

An additional way you can sometimes tell an image is generated by AI is by noticing over-the-top facial expressions. I’ve noticed that Midjourney renders expressions in exaggerated ways, with skin folds from things like smiling being very pronounced. The pained expression on Melania Trump’s face looks more like a re-creation of Edvard Munch’s The Scream or a still from some unreleased A24 horror movie than a snapshot from a human photographer.

Keep in mind that world leaders, celebrities, social media influencers, and anyone with large quantities of photos circulating online may appear more convincing in deepfaked photos than AI-generated images of people with less of a visible internet presence. The more famous someone is, the more images they have to learn from. Very famous people are rendered well, while less famous people can be a little weird. It might be worth thinking twice before taking a photo of yourself with friends after a fun night out, as the algorithm will try to recreate your face. (Though it’s likely that the AI generators have already scraped your image data from the web.)

In the run-up to the US presidential election, do you have a policy about artificial intelligence generated images? The current policy on the social media platform states that you can not release synthetic, manipulated, or out- of-context media that may confuse or harm people. There are many exceptions to the fact that meme, commentary, and posts not made with the intention to deceive viewers can be created.

It was almost naive a few years ago that people would be able to make fake world leaders at home. Social media platforms might need to rethink their approach to synthetic content as the world of generative AI becomes harder to discern from the real deal.

The Trump-Like Truth Social Media of the Day: Donald Trump is a Psychopath, Not a Pseudopath

Positing the idea of violent retribution into the echo chamber of his Truth Social platform early Friday, Trump said it is “known that potential death & destruction” that would be “catastrophic for our Country” would result if a charge is brought against him.

Trump is threatening to pull the country back into his reality as both a third-time presidential candidate and a potential defendants. Trump has not been formally charged with any crime and denies all wrongdoing.

Compare the lived reality where people interact, mostly in peace, and go about their lives with the Trump-centered, fake world available on social media.

In the real world, prosecutors need to cobble together a case before indicting a person. On social media, Trump said everything is a plot against him.

In a post Thursday, Trump declared his innocence and said, “our country is being devastated as they tell us to be peaceful.”

The veiled threats place a new form of pressure on Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who has already been threatened by Republicans in Congress with an investigation. Trump didn’t name Bragg in the Friday post but said anyone that would charge him with a crime is a psychopath.

CNN’s Brynn Gingras and Kara Scannell reported Friday that Bragg’s office received a package containing a white powder substance and a threatening note. They added that while authorities determined there was no dangerous substance, the package capped off a week where law enforcement has seen continual threats against the court, including several bomb threats, all of which turned out to be unfounded.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/25/politics/ai-trump-what-matters/index.html

Bellingcat: Why Donald Trump is so obviously wrong about his first impression of persecution in the U.S. Armed forces investigation of Vladimir Navalny

The top Republicans in Washington were unwilling to answer questions about it.

Bellingcat is a website that uses social media posts and other digital data to prove facts, uncover crimes and investigate atrocities. CNN worked with Bellingcat to uncover Russian operatives who tried to murder dissident leader Alexey Navalny. The group has found war crimes in Ukraine through social media.

The fake photos, while requiring a double take, were clearly not real. The first impression can be misleading. They fed Trump’s narrative of persecution, a visual manifestation of the drama he puts into his posts.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/25/politics/ai-trump-what-matters/index.html

Artificial Intelligence and the Crisis of the Real World: Donie O’ Sullivan’s Conversation on January 6, 2021, at the U.S. Capitol

Donie O’ Sullivan of CNN had a report on the power of artificial intelligence in audio. He was able to call his parents using an artificial intelligence generator. The computer was not speaking but it sounded like his voice. His mother said that O’ Sullivan’s Irish accent didn’t feel right during the conversation, but she didn’t catch it in real time.

Anyone can deny reality if they want, because everything in this world can be fake, and nothing has to be real.

There are a lot of examples of deepfake photos and videos causing harm, such as the women whose faces have been deep fake to make them look like pornography.

When something is repeated enough online or when a fake narrative ensues, it can have an effect on the real world. That’s certainly what happened on January 6, 2021, when conspiracy theories that blossomed online turned into an attack on the Capitol.

“There is no online and offline world; there’s one world, and it’s fully integrated,” Farid told O’Sullivan with regard to the potential for AI to create a false reality online that bleeds into the real world.

“When things happen on the internet, they have real implications for individuals, for communities, for societies, for democracies, and I don’t think we as a field have fully come to grips with our responsibility here,” he said.

It’s something to be very careful of as we look at what could be a historic period in which a former president, current candidate, serial conspiracy theorist and master of social media potentially faces criminal charges.