Donald Trump has addressed the controversy around AI images of Taylor Swift endorsing his campaign, claiming, “I didn’t generate them”.
Last week, the former President shared fake AI-generated images on his Truth Social Account that suggested the singer had endorsed his 2024 presidential campaign. They included screenshots of women wearing shirts with the slogan ‘Swifties For Trump’, and an image of Swift made up like Uncle Sam, with the banner: “Taylor wants you to vote for Trump”.
Now, Grady Trimble, a reporter for Fox Business News, has confronted Trump about the subject, asking him if he was worried about being sued by Swift over the images.
“I don’t know anything about them, other than somebody else generated them,” Trump replied. “I didn’t generate them.”
Even by the dismal standards of Donald Trump this is a new low. All it will do is probably force Taylor Swift to comment and that's not going to be good for him or his faltering campaign pic.twitter.com/SCiSiU12WJ
— Martin Williamson (@mogodonman) August 19, 2024
Donald Trump shares AI-generated images of Taylor Swift and her fans, falsely implying her endorsement. pic.twitter.com/OkaCuQtULb
— Pop Crave (@PopCrave) August 19, 2024
“Somebody came out. They said, ‘Oh, look at this’. These were all made up by other people. AI is always very dangerous in that way. It’s happening with me, too. They’re making — having me speak. I speak perfectly, I mean absolutely perfectly on AI, and I’m, like, endorsing other products and things. It’s a little bit dangerous out there.”
It was only earlier this year that Trump’s allies pledged a “holy war” against Swift in the run-up to the November election.
The ‘Love Story’ singer has not officially endorsed any candidate in the 2024 election, and despite rumours that she might appear at the Democratic National Convention this week, that did not happen.
On the eve of the 2020 election, Swift did share a video message in which she encouraged fans to vote, having already formally endorsed Joe Biden earlier in that campaign. Last year, she led record-breaking numbers of people to the Vote.org website after encouraging her fans to register to vote.
Although she is yet to respond to Trump this time, Swift has previously commented on the Republican nominee, slamming him in 2020 and telling him: “We will vote you out in November”, and accusing him of “gaslighting the American public” a year earlier.
Back in February, Trump responded to claims Joe Biden was seeking endorsement from the pop star to swing the next election in a series of strange posts where he claimed he made Swift “so much money”, and was fond of her boyfriend – “even though he may be a Liberal, and probably can’t stand me!”
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