Donald Trump shares doctored images of Taylor Swift endorsing him | Entertainment & Arts News
Donald Trump seems to have shared a set of fake images on his social media platform, implying that Taylor Swift and some of her fans are endorsing him for the upcoming election.
The photos posted by the former Republican president on Truth Social featured a fake poster of Swift dressed in red, white, and blue, with a caption saying: “Taylor Swift Wants You To Vote For Donald Trump.”
“I accept!” Mr. Trump wrote.
Swift has not publicly endorsed a candidate in the 2024 race but has previously supported Joe Biden and criticized Mr. Trump in the past.
Donald Trump shared the images on Truth Social, his own social media platform
The images also showed fans wearing “Swifties for Trump” shirts.
Despite two of the images depicting a real woman supporting Mr. Trump, most of the women portrayed are not real, as reported by Sky News’ US partner NBC News. At least 15 of them are AI-generated representations of people.
The images he shared were originally posted on X (formerly Twitter) by pro-Trump accounts. One of those accounts also published multiple guides on using generative AI tools on its Substack blog, according to NBC News.
“There is no Swifties For Trump movement – but there should be,” admitted one of the accounts that Trump reshared on Truth Social, in a caption accompanying the AI-generated images.
However, Mr. Trump’s campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung told the Reuters news agency that “Swifties for Trump is a massive movement that grows bigger every single day,” when asked to comment on the fake Swift image.
Swift has been performing her final Eras shows of the European leg of her tour, which is scheduled to end at Wembley Stadium tonight.
Kamala Harris has taken over as the Democratic candidate from president Joe Biden. Pic: Reuters/Kevin Lamarque
Some of Swift’s fans previously mobilized to support Kamala Harris’s campaign. The vice president is expected to be formally nominated as the 2024 Democratic candidate at the party’s national convention in Chicago this week.
Shortly after Mr. Biden announced he was not running for re-election in July, a group called “Swifties for Kamala” launched on social media. It has over 61,000 followers on X and is not affiliated with the singer or Harris.
“We do not represent every Swiftie, but I think there is a reason we don’t need AI to show our support for Kamala,” the organization’s co-founder, Irene Kim, told NBC News in a statement.
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AI-generated images and videos of Swift have repeatedly gone viral this year, including deepfake sexual pictures on X which broke the platform’s guidelines.
Several Swift fans and watchdog groups said many of the images posted by Mr. Trump appeared to be deepfakes generated by artificial intelligence.
Sky News has contacted representatives for Swift for comment.
