President Donald Trump is turning artificial intelligence into one of his most potent political tools, using it to amplify his message and sharpen his online persona in ways experts say are proving strikingly effective.<\/p>\n
Over the weekend, he posted<\/a> a highly produced AI-generated video on Truth Social depicting himself wearing a crown, piloting a fighter jet labeled \u201cKing Trump,\u201d and dropping what appeared to be excrement on protesters below \u2013 a likely reference to the nationwide \u201cNo Kings\u201d<\/a> rallies that drew millions of demonstrators.<\/p>\n The post was not an isolated stunt. It reflects a deliberate evolution in Trump\u2019s digital strategy, experts argue \u2013 one that fuses AI-generated spectacle with the combative, meme-driven style that has defined his political communication for nearly a decade.<\/p>\n At a press conference Monday, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson defended the video. \u201cYou can argue he\u2019s probably the most effective person who\u2019s ever used social media for that,\u201d he said. \u201cHe is using satire to make a point. He is not calling for the murder of his political opponents.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump dismissed the protests, telling reporters Sunday, \u201cI\u2019m not a king. I work my ass off to make our country great. That\u2019s all it is.\u201d<\/p>\n AI as a political weapon<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s reliance on AI-generated content has become a defining feature of his digital presence. In recent months, he has circulated several AI-created images and videos \u2013 depicting himself as a pope<\/a>, a warrior<\/a>, winning the Nobel Peace Prize <\/a>\u00a0\u2013 to reinforce his political persona and mock his critics. Last month, he posted an AI video of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries in a fake mustache and sombrero, which Jeffries and civil rights groups condemned as racist.<\/p>\n Some of these posts were misinformation regarding policies, including one video that promoted a so-called \u201cmedbed\u201d\u2014a hospital technology that does not exist, but has been a conspiracy theory running throughout QAnon circles<\/a> online.<\/p>\n Earlier this year, Trump shared an AI-generated video<\/a> of \u201cTrump Gaza,\u201d which imagined the Gaza Strip as a Dubai-style resort. The clip, originally created by independent producers as a parody of Trump\u2019s rhetoric, was reposted by the President and widely interpreted as an endorsement of his earlier suggestion<\/a> to \u201clevel\u201d Gaza and develop a \u201cRiviera of the Middle East.\u201d The video prompted condemnation from Western and Arab leaders alike.<\/p>\n Cayce Myers, professor of communication at Virginia Tech, warns that these videos have more \u201ctraction\u201d and \u201cresonance\u201d than static images, and could usher in a new era of political messaging.<\/p>\n But in doing so, Trump and his communications team are able to leverage AI as a way to reach younger voters. \u201cIt\u2019s part of this larger conversation around where the Gen Z voters see themselves,\u201d Myers tells TIME. \u201c Gen Z is very different from older generations, and they also seem to have a greater appetite for that kind of commentary, that kind of visual commentary.\u201d<\/p>\n This shift reflects how political communication has changed in tone and tolerance in recent years. \u201cI think that we\u2019re in a political space where the appetite for political content that would in previous generations be seen as distasteful, is now palatable,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Bret Schafer, senior fellow in media and digital disinformation at the Alliance for Securing Democracy, says it is a \u201ccomplete shift\u201d in how political communication works. <\/p>\n \u201cThe use of memes and the use of what we used to consider stuff that would exist in the worlds of Reddit, now has drifted into the discourse of elected leaders,\u201d he says. \u201cI don\u2019t think it is good for our kind of political discourse in this country to adopt the online style of podcasters, vloggers, and partisan communicators.\u201d<\/p>\n A new frontier for misinformation<\/p>\n Experts warn that Trump\u2019s growing use of AI coincides with a rapid improvement in generative technology. Ben Colman, CEO of the deepfake-detection firm Reality Defender, says new tools \u2013 such as OpenAI\u2019s Sora 2, an advanced text-to-video generator, are producing more realistic and accessible AI media than ever before.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s better quality, but better quality for really bad use cases,\u201d Colman tells TIME. \u201cGenerative AI and deepfakes are accelerating misinformation, scams, and attacks on elected officials, minorities, and women. The platforms are effectively marketplaces for attention, and it\u2019s a better return on investment if you\u2019re trying to generate attention to extreme views.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis isn’t limited to one party, audience, or belief. Everyone is doing it to everyone, and everyone is vulnerable regardless or notability or background.\u201d<\/p>\n This rise of AI-driven propaganda poses new challenges for regulators. According to Myers, the Trump Administration\u2019s approach to AI has been largely hands-off, favoring private-sector innovation over oversight. Executive Orders<\/a> have focused on curbing \u201cwoke\u201d influence in government-funded AI projects and declaring that the U.S. must \u201cachieve global dominance in artificial intelligence.\u201d<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Elon Musk, who worked in the Trump administration, has aligned his company xAI with similar ideological messaging. Grok, its conversational AI platform, has been criticized for promoting inflammatory content and right-wing conspiracy theories \u2013 at one point generating<\/a> what users called a \u201cNazi bender.\u201dAs generative video tools become cheaper and more advanced, Myers predicts the political use of AI will only expand. \u201cIt\u2019s not just some sort of one off post,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s creating an agenda and creating a national dialog around a particular issue. It\u2019s using a kind of comedic satire through AI generative video to shape that agenda,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"President Donald Trump is turning artificial intelligence into one of his most potent political tools, using it to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":89519,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[345,343,344,54,85,46,31801,125],"class_list":{"0":"post-89518","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-donald-trump","12":"tag-il","13":"tag-israel","14":"tag-news-desk","15":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89518"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89518\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}