Photos posted on Tuesday showing former U.S. President Donald Trump being restrained and dragged away by police officers are fake and were generated with artificial intelligence (AI) technology, according to Twitter’s Community Notes.
Three photos showing Mr. Trump fighting and shouting at police officers trying to control him were re-posted by an entertainment account on Twitter that had around 1,24,000 followers. The account claimed that Mr. Trump had been arrested in “downtown Washington D.C.” The post was quickly retweeted thousands of times.
The fake news post and AI generated images | Photo Credit: Twitter
However, Twitter’s added context feature flagged that the photos were AI generated, and showed the original account that made them. The user was verified with a blue tick due to their being affiliated with a verified organisation.
NBC reported on Wednesday that Mr. Trump faced possible criminal charges regarding payments to actor Stormy Daniels, who claimed she had an affair with the former president. While an arrest was “possible,” according to the outlet, it had not taken place when the AI photos were posted.
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AI images are generally easy to identify due to mistakes such as human subjects with more than five fingers on each hand, or strangely rendered lettering. However, the photos of Mr. Trump’s false arrest were reasonably hyper realistic.
