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    BREAKING: DeSantis Campaign Caught Using AI-Generated Images to Smear Trump

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    The campaign for Florida governor and 2024 GOP hopeful Ron DeSantis just got caught using AI-generated pictures of former President Donald Trump hugging Tony Fauci. The pictures were passed off as real and used in an attack ad going after Trump for being too friendly to Fauci.

    Below the ad, which even notoriously DeSantis-friendly consumer notes labeled as fake, saying, “The 3 still shots showing Trump embracing Fauci are AI generated images. The remainder of the ad’s recordings and images are authentic.” Watch it here:

    Here are the 6 images the ad used, three of which were real and three of which were fake, the interspersing of which was meant to confuse people and make Trump look overly friendly toward Fauci:



    AFP Fact Check is the group that discovered the images were fake, writing, “A new Ron DeSantis campaign video attacking Donald Trump purports to show three photos of the former president embracing Anthony Fauci, a key member of the US coronavirus task force, with kisses on the cheek. But the images have the markings of fakes created using artificial intelligence technology, three experts in media forensics told AFP.”

    The AFP article also quoted an expert from Berkeley who described the mixing of AI images with real images as “sneaky,” saying “It was sneaky to intermix what appears to be authentic photos with fake photos, but these three images are almost certainly AI generated.”

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    Tim Pool savaged the DeSantis Campaign for the lying about Trump, saying, “I was 55/45 for Trump/DeSantis. Now Im 0% for DeSantis. Using AI images to smear Trump is a hard fuck you. DeSantis must disavow.”

    Pool, skewering that since-deleted tweet with a mockingly worded, fake denunciation of Trump, saying, “I hereby, once again, disavow Donald J Trump. He posted a picture of Ron Desantis riding a rhinoceros and many Desantis supporters thought it was real. It was wrong for Trump to mislead these people in this way and Trump must apologize for confusing Desantis supporters with this image.” He then added a picture of the obviously fake RINO tweet for reference. Check that out here:

    Pool also said that the faked images used by the DeSantis campaign were a major red line the DeSantis camp crossed, writing, “Holy fuck this is dirty as shit. DeSantis War Room is running AI Images of Trump embracing Fauci. This crosses the line”

    The other line of attack DeSantis supporters used to justify the AI-generated pictures and passing them off as real was a video Trump posted in which DeSantis’ Twitter space opening announcement was mocked, with the Devil, Klaus Schwab, Hitler, and others cheering DeSantis as he announced his presidency. The video, obviously fake given the cast of characters involved, was meant to mock the space’s glitchiness and everyone else in it overshadowing DeSantis, not to try and trick people, making comparisons between them inaccurate.

    Pool mocked the DeSantis Campaign for that claim as well, saying, “I hereby disavow Trump for posting a video of the Devil and Hitler in a chatroom making fun of Desantis. Many Desantis supporters thought it was real and it was wrong for Trump to post it.”

    As of the time this article was written, Trump has not yet commented on the matter.