AI-powered fanfiction blurs political reality
The proliferation of fake AI stories about politicians haven’t created real political problems for them yet. Other online fakery, like bogus estimates of politicians’ net worth, has taken up more of their time — lies to debunk before voters start to believe them.
These fake stories are very different, and tend to make their subjects look good. Pete Hegseth Rolls Up His Sleeves to Cook for Disabled Veterans, an illustrated story that has been reposted across Facebook’s bogus news pages, suggests that the media is unfairly ignoring Hegseth’s decency and charity. The most popular version of this, including an AI image that shows the defense secretary’s finger stuck inside of a levitating hamburger, has been shared nearly 6,000 times.
President Donald Trump and his family were some of the first subjects of this phony content mill, with less discouragement than Crockett. During last year’s presidential campaign, the Trump operation shared AI images of the candidate saving pets — cats, dogs, and even some squirrels — from swarthy immigrants and raging hurricanes.
In this new term, the White House has shared He-Man Trump images created with AI; most controversially, the president shared a computer-generated fantasy of Gaza, after a possible Trump takeover, on his Truth Social account.
AI accounts have added to this with illustrated stories about the presidential family humiliating Trump’s enemies — “Do you know that Baron Trump has engaged in a public confrontation with the professors who signed the letter against Trump?” — or singing gospel music. (The latter is one of the many pseudo-Trump music videos from Vivo Tunes, which has more than 230,000 YouTube subscribers, and a disclaimer that its content does “not reflect the thoughts or attitudes of the imitated artists.“)
The newer, more politically diverse fakery is typically about conflict, not singing contests. It’s packaged like breaking news, reported from an alternate reality where clapbacks and call-outs can instantly send people to prison. It mangles some details, but gets others right; a confrontation between Attorney Gen. Pam Bondi and a non-existent liberal senator unfolds in Dirksen 226, which is indeed where the Senate Judiciary Committee holds its hearings.
Since Jan. 27, when the account was created on YouTube, Mr. Noah’s Stories has added more than 42,000 subscribers and clocked more than 5.6 million views. The Crockett character was introduced on March 31, when she confronted a judge with evidence of his corruption, “walking into a storm she always knew was rigged against her.” It was a rewrite of a story that had initially starred Michelle Obama. But it was a much bigger hit.
Related Knowledge Center: Artificial intelligence
On top of a failing business model, newsrooms must navigate the powerful — and not fully reliable — new capabilities of artificial intelligence and the deployment of large language models.
State of the business model | Copyright and intellectual property
Related Knowledge Center: Information integrity
In an increasingly fractured media landscape, truth has been a casualty in the public discussion. Coverage has been warped by the business needs of struggling news organizations, and a significant segment of the public relies on bad-faith outlets that are little more than propagandists. While fact-checking has become routine, some organizations are exploring other ways to combat the trends. And misinformation spewed by AI-driven chatbots has become more of a feature than simply a bug.
Fact-checking and its detractors