Trump shares an AI-generated photo of Kamala Harris

portraying Joseph Stalin, but it only resembles Mario.

 

 

 

 

“Donald Trump accuses Kamala Harris of being a heroic plumber who saved Princess Peach from Bowser and his evil Koopa army.”

MAGA is still waging war against AI.

This weekend, former president Donald Trump took to Truth Social to promote an obviously AI-generated image of presidential candidate Kamala Harris dressed in communist garb, complete with a Stalinesque mustache. Trump was stepping up his charges that Harris is a Marxist communist, even though she isn’t.

This was hardly the first time Trump had attacked Harris using AI. Last month, Trump posted an AI-drawn image of Harris speaking to a group of Soviet-style figures with a hammer-and-sickle flag waving overhead. This came days after he falsely accused his rival of using AI to fake the appearance of large crowds greeting her at a campaign stop and, in the process, argued that a presidential candidate using AI to create fake images should warrant disqualification on grounds of “election interference.”

 

But this is the first time he’s used propaganda to his advantage to make his rival appear like the well-known Mario character from Nintendo. Let’s get started!

The photo originated from a Substack post by a writer employed at the Gateway Pundit, a far-right online publication well-known for running articles supporting irrational claims that Trump was the victim of election theft in 2020 (many facts, as well as the opinions of numerous judges he nominated, have refuted those accusations). Trump shared the picture again along with a link to the Substack article that called Harris a “rock-ribbed socialist” without offering any context.

 

Of course, the image is absurd. It doesn’t appear real at all, and as social media users have noted, the imaginary stache of the phony Harris more closely resembles the renowned cartoon plumber from Nintendo than the infamous Soviet leader.

“The only thing this post makes me wanna do is vote for Kamala,” said one X user, “and then play Super Mario World on my old Super Nintendo system.”

“BREAKING,” said cartoonist Jason Selvig, “Donald Trump accuses Kamala Harris of being a heroic plumber who saved Princess Peach from Bowser and his evil Koopa army.”

Whether or whether it is persuasive, the image does demonstrate the expanding application of generative AI, particularly Elon Musk‘s guardrail-free Grok model, as a quick and easy propaganda tool. After all, not all promotion using images is created with the goal of appearing authentic.

In this instance, it doesn’t exactly seem like anything meant to convert ardently blue voters from Harris’ camp; it’s cartoonish and overblown by nature.

Instead, this kind of misinformation supports a larger Trumpworld endeavor to paint Harris as an extreme leftist, but it reads much more like a profoundly politicized plea to the internet MAGA base.

To put it another way, even while a number of professed Harris supporters made fun of the phony photo, right-wing X poster Phillip “Catturd” Buchanan and his supporters jumped on it and responded with jokes about “Comrade Kamala” and, in some cases, their own artificial intelligence-created pictures.

This weekend, Trump wasn’t the only far-right person to use AI to support communist accusations made against Harris. X owner Musk used the platform he purchased in 2022 to release his own AI image of Harris dressed in communist attire on Monday in reaction to a post made by the Harris campaign on X that mentioned Trump’s promise to impose dictatorship on “day one” of his second term.

A mocking caption read, “Kamala vows to be a communist dictator on day one,” by Musk. “Can you believe she wears that outfit!?” The article is devoid of a fact-check to refute the untrue claim that Harris promised to be a “communist dictator on day one” and has not yet received a Community Note addressing the usage of AI.

Users on X, including “Happy Days” actor Henry Winkler and former UN deputy secretary-general Jan Eliasson, criticized Musk for his blatantly fabricated photo.

Mehdi Hasan, the chief editor of Zeteo and a former MSNBC contributor, commented, “Just straight up disinformation, with no parody label or community note, from the owner of this site and the guy with the most followers.” “Anyone who claimed he wouldn’t use this platform to push rightwing conspiracies and help elect Trump must be feeling pretty dumb right now.”

The use of AI by Trump not to mention his wealthiest and most powerful backer to further politicized attack lines is indicative of the increasingly surreal nature of the 2024 election, which will be fought out on the heels of nearly a decade of unrest, fake news, and the never-ending barrage of misinformation from social media. It also undoubtedly supports a recent claim made by Charlie Warzel of The Atlantic, who noted that, in the shadowy annals of social networks like X, the “meme-loving” MAGA style and the hyperreal tone of AI trash are gradually blending together.

On that note, Musk‘s X tweet garnered both love and derision, similar to Trump‘s Truth Social-boosted Lenin-slash-Mario image.

One X user commented, “I can’t believe it,” in the billionaire’s remarks. “Kammunism.”