To persuade African Americans to vote Republican, Donald Trump supporters have been creating and sharing fake images of black people created using AI.
BBC Panorama found dozens of fake news stories that said black people supported the former president.
Mr. Trump has actively sought out black votes, which were very important to Joe Biden’s victory in 2020.
But there is no proof that these pictures have anything to do with Mr. Trump’s campaign.
A co-founder of Black Voters Matter, a group that gets black people to vote, said that the photos that had been changed were part of a “strategic narrative” meant to make Mr. Trump look like he is popular with black people.
AI-made fake pictures of black Trump fans are spreading a new type of false information before the November election for president of the United States.
In 2016, there was proof of campaigns with foreign influence, but the BBC found AI-made images that looked like they were made and shared by US voters.
One of them was Mark Kaye and his staff at a Florida radio show for free thinkers.
They made a picture of Mr. Trump at a party, happy, with his arms around a group of black women, and posted it on Facebook, where Mr. Kaye has more than a million followers.
At first glance, it looks real, but when you look more closely, you can see that everyone’s skin is a bit too shiny and some people’s hands are missing fingers. These are all indicators that artificial intelligence (AI) created the images.
He put up a story about black voters who support Mr. Trump and attached this picture to it, making it look like all of these people back the former president’s run for president.
The BBC’s probe found another widely seen AI picture of Mr. Trump posing on a front porch with black voters. It was first shared by a satirical account that makes up pictures of the former president, but it only got a lot of attention when it was reposted with a new caption that said he had stopped his motorcade to meet these people, which was not true.
We found Shaggy, the person behind the account. He is a staunch Trump fan who lives in Michigan.