Republicans in a desperate situation are

using AI to create fake images of Donald Trump holding kittens.

 

What even exists these days?

An artificial intelligence (AI)-generated image of presidential candidate Donald Trump immersed chest-deep in water, closing his eyes and cuddling a duck and cat, was shared on the Republican House Judiciary Committee’s official account today.

The politicians wrote, “Protect our kittens and ducks in Ohio!” above the picture.
The image appears artificial intelligence (AI)-generated, even though the influential Republican committee one of the House of Representatives’ most prestigious assignments did not explicitly state or watermark that it was; the former president’s features, like those of the cartoonishly serene-looking cat and duck, are strangely smooth.

Elon Musk, the owner of X and a well-known Trump backer, reshared the image with a heart-emoji message.
However, the purpose of the image was not to make Trump who is known for not being fond of animals look cute.

It was made to support the partisan, provocative, and unfounded rumor that Haitian immigrants flooding the US are killing and eating their neighbors’ dogs. According to real law enforcement professionals, this hearsay is based on heavily refuted “reports” and hazy social media posts.
Furthermore, it’s something we’re witnessing more and more of: AI is being used by American political operatives and candidates, typically on the right, to conjure up imaginary events that support their ideology even though they never actually occurred.

This past weekend, a neighbor’s cat was allegedly murdered and eaten by a Haitian immigrant living in Canton, Ohio.

The story gained widespread attention on social media when right-wing influencer Ian Miles Cheong, who is located in Malaysia, uploaded a purported video of the incident with his 1.1 million followers.
Without providing any proof, Cheong, a former contributor to RT, the state-backed media outlet in Russia linked to the recent scandal surrounding a number of well-known influencers on the right-wing social media platform, informed her followers that the unsettling crime’s perpetrator was a Haitian immigrant.

Not long after, a right-wing poster published a picture of a man holding a goose in the same thread, which he said was proof that Haitians were killing and stealing animals from Ohio. The image was accompanied by a snapshot of a widely shared post from a Facebook page in Springfield, Ohio, where a local resident said that “rangers & police” had informed them that immigrants had seized ducks and geese from a nearby park and had stolen and eaten family pets like cats and dogs.

The screen grab was labeled, “There are reports of Haitian migrants stealing and butchering geese, cats, and dogs in Springfield, Ohio,” by the X poster in Cheong’s remarks. “Thanks, Kamala.” (Another well-known right-wing account shared an almost identical post the day before.) “End Wokeness.”)

However, Springfield police have refuted the veracity of the Facebook rumor, as the Springfield News-Sun reported earlier today. They told the newspaper that the claims of animal theft by immigrants are “not something that’s on our radar right now.”

Cheong’s ludicrous allegation of the terrifying tale in Canton was expeditiously refuted. As the Daily Dot notes, not even Fox News’ article about the incident mentioned that the alleged cat-eater, Allexis Ferrell, a 27-year-old Canton resident, is a Haitian immigrant. Furthermore, a short online search reveals that Ferrell has been in the nation since at least before the Biden presidency, as other social media users quickly refuted.

Nevertheless, despite the lack of supporting evidence, the rumors quickly gained traction on X, where right-wing commentators and influencers like Benny Johnson, the founder of Turning Point USA, billionaire X owner Musk, and other reactionary commentators were among the celebrities being covertly paid by the Russian government to produce content that polarized audiences.

Kirk, for example, unleashed a conspiratorial tirade on X on Sunday on the “Biden-Harris mass immigration replacement plan.”
The Republican-led House Judiciary Committee then formally intervened earlier today, releasing an AI-generated picture that implied without any supporting data that immigrants are killing Ohio’s cute animals in large numbers and that Trump would be the one to stop them.

The committee’s use of AI sparked a series of copycat posts.
“Save the animals!!!” one blue-checked X user wrote in response to the house committee, adding an AI-generated image of Trump and a horde of mishappen animals together in a dingy.

“Save the kittens,” reads another post, this one portraying the 78-year-old former president leaping out of a helicopter to scoop up the animals. “Protect the ducks.”

For a powerful group of elected representatives tasked with ensuring the administration of justice to share an AI-generated image falsely affirming uncorroborated or entirely debunked partisan rumors is an alarming use of AI technology in the political sphere.

It’s true that Springfield, Ohio has experienced a large influx of Haitian immigrants in recent months, most of whom have fled widespread political and gang violence in their home country, and that the town has thus become an accidental epicenter of the ongoing debate over immigration, as The New York Times recently reported.

But local law enforcement has made it clear that they’ve received no reports about stolen animals at the hands of Haitian immigrants, despite a viral Facebook post and one picture of one man with one goose. And there’s no evidence that the awful killing of the cat in Canton was by a recent immigrant, nevermind one from Haiti.

Regardless of glaring evidentiary holes, though, the influential Capitol Hill committee used AI to drum up a fake picture of Donald Trump embracing Ohio’s cutest fake animals, fanning partisan flames and affirming spurious, divisive rumors in the process.
But with the very AI-happy Trump holding firm as the party’s standard bearer, what else should we expect?