Fake celebrity endorsements plague presidential race
X’s chatbot Grok can generate a fake photo of Taylor Swift fans supporting Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
Daily TribuneX’s chatbot Grok can generate a fake photo of Taylor Swift fans supporting Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
Bogus celebrity endorsements of US election candidates have surged in recent months
Kevin Dietsch, ANDRE DIAS NOBRE / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA/AFP/File
WASHINGTON, United States (AFP) — A database from the News Literacy Project (NLP), a nonprofit which recently launched a misinformation dashboard to raise awareness about US election falsehoods, has so far listed 70 social media posts peddling fake “VIP” endorsements and snubs.
Among them are posts sharing a manipulated picture of singer Lady Gaga with a “Trump 2024” sign, implying that she endorsed the former president, Agence France-Presse’s (AFP) fact-checkers reported.
Other posts falsely asserted that the Oscar-winning actor Morgan Freeman, who has been critical of the Republican, said that a second Trump presidency would be “good for the country,” according to US fact-checkers.
Digitally altered photos of singer Bruce Springsteen wearing a “Keep America Trumpless” shirt and actor Ryan Reynolds sporting a “Kamala removes nasty orange stains” shirt also swirled on social media sites.
“The platforms have enabled it,” Peter Adams, senior vice president for research at NLP, said.
“As they pull back from moderation and hesitate to take down election related misinformation, they have become a major avenue for trolls, opportunists and propagandists to reach a mass audience.”
In particular, X has emerged as a hotbed of political disinformation after the platform scaled back content moderation policies and reinstated accounts of known purveyors of falsehoods, researchers say.
American officials responsible for overseeing elections have also urged X owner Elon Musk to fix X’s artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot known as Grok.
Lucas Hansen, co-founder of the nonprofit CivAI, demonstrated to AFP the ease with which Grok can generate a fake photo of Swift fans supporting Trump using a simple prompt: “Image of an outside rally of woman wearing ‘Swifties for Trump’ T-shirts.”
Last month, Trump shared doctored images showing Swift throwing her support behind his campaign, apparently seeking to tap into the pop singer’s mega star power to sway voters.
The photos suggested the pop star and her fans, popularly known as Swifties, backed Trump’s campaign.
