The White House has become a superspreader of AI-generated videos.
Franklin Roosevelt mastered the use of radio. John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan were top of the game on TV. And Donald Trump is the first AI slop president.
Since January, Trump’s administration has used artificial intelligence to churn out a steady stream of fake images on social media, from alligators in ICE hats to crying members of Congress,while the official White House account on X has used it to portray the president as Superman, the pope and a villain from “Star Wars.”
Earlier this week, Trump used his account on his personal social media platform, Truth Social, to share an AI-generated clip showing former President Barack Obama being forcibly detained by the FBI. As bizarre as it was, it fit in with his other nonsensical memes, which included various Democrats in orange prison jumpsuits as the “Shady Bunch” and a fake-looking video of a woman in a bikini catching a snake with her bare hands.
There’s a term for someone using social media this way that can’t be repeated in polite company, so let’s just call it slop-posting. It’s usually done by a 14-year-old boy, or someone who still acts like one, and it’s mostly just absurd or mildly offensive. It’s not harmless, necessarily, but it’s mostly just lame trolling.
To suggest that our President has the maturity of a 14-year-old boy is generous. Let’s not insult the kids, most of whom are more mature and better behaved than King Donald.
But when the president does it, it’s something else entirely. Even in the most harmless AI-generated memes, Trump is muddying the waters on what is real, encouraging his supporters to believe everything and nothing. Did a woman in a bikini really catch a snake? Is Obama really going to be arrested? To a Trump supporter steeped in these memes, the answer may not even matter.
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https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-obama-arrest-ai-slop-video-truth-social-rcna221041
