You can be anything, perhaps you were told growing up. Doctor. Astronaut. Maybe, one day, the president. But even the chief executive of the United States<\/a>, the free world\u2019s leader, frames himself as something more epic \u2014 as someone not entirely himself.<\/p>\n On the social media accounts of Donald Trump<\/a> and his second-term administration, a new official image of the president is emerging bit by bit: one generated artificially. <\/p>\n A sign of the times, certainly \u2014 when the appeal of reimagining yourself with artificial intelligence has trickled up from us everyday citizens. Bored with your selfies? Join a viral trend: There\u2019s an image generator or a chatbot that can turn you into a Renaissance<\/a>-style painting, a Studio Ghibli<\/a> character or an action figure with box art and accessories. <\/p>\n Artificial imagery isn\u2019t new for Trump, an early target of AI-generated simulacra who later exploited the technology during his 2024 campaign for the presidency. \u201cIt works both ways,\u201d the Republican<\/a> president said of AI-generated content at a news conference earlier this month. \u201cIf something happens that\u2019s really bad, maybe I\u2019ll have to just blame AI.\u201d <\/p>\n The AI images of Trump posted by him and his team opt for the alternative \u2014 not deceptive but self-evident in their fictitiousness. Pope Francis<\/a> dies, and Trump jokes to reporters that he\u2019d like to be pope. A week later, he is, but in an AI-generated image that he posts, reposted by the White House<\/a>. Trump likens himself to a king in a Truth Social<\/a> post in February, and AI makes him one in an X post by the White House<\/a> less than an hour later.<\/p>\n The artifice arrives in Trump\u2019s usual style \u2014 brassy, unabashed, attention-grabbing \u2014 and squares with his social media team\u2019s heavy meme posting, which it has promised to continue. The administration\u2019s official social media accounts have grown by more than 16 million new followers across platforms since Inauguration Day, a White House official told NBC News<\/a>.<\/p>\n The White House recognizes the appeal. In July, it posted to its X account: \u201cNowhere in the Constitution does it say we can\u2019t post banger memes.\u201d Attached to the post, a photo of a sign on the White House lawn parodying the naysayers: \u201coMg, diD tHe wHiTE hOuSE reALLy PosT tHis?\u201d <\/p>\n Behind the commander in chief\u2019s desire to craft an AI self \u2014 not itself uncommon \u2014 an infantry of official communications channels stands at his ready. And we, the people, can\u2019t help but tune in.<\/p>\n open image in gallery<\/p>\n President Donald Trump speaks with reporters before boarding Air Force One at Morristown Airport, Sept. 14, 2025, in Morristown, N.J. (AP Photo\/Alex Brandon, File) (Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)<\/p>\n Like so much on the internet these days, Trump\u2019s AI portraits are primed for people to react, says Evan Cornog, a political historian and author of \u201cThe Power and the Story: How the Crafted Presidential Narrative Has Determined Political Success from George Washington<\/a> to George W. Bush.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cBy the time you\u2019ve seen it, you\u2019ve understood it. And that\u2019s, of course, the efficacy,\u201d Cornog said. \u201cIt requires no effort, either for the person generating it, but particularly for the person consuming it.\u201d <\/p>\n The expressive power of political imagery, regardless of the truth of its message, has long been understood by politicians and their detractors. <\/p>\n President William Henry Harrison\u2019s log cabin and hard cider campaign symbols, representing him as a \u201cman of the people,\u201d helped him win the election of 1840. Thirty years later, political cartoonist Thomas Nast would turn public opinion against William Marcy \u201cBoss\u201d Tweed with his scathing portrayals of the politician, whom he depicted satirically overweight from greed. \u201cLet\u2019s stop those damned pictures!\u201d Tweed once said, or so the story goes.<\/p>\n The decades since witnessed the birth of photo, film, TV, the internet, computer printers, image-editing software and digital screens that shrank until they could fit in our pockets, making it increasingly easy to create and disseminate \u2014 and manipulate \u2014 imagery.<\/p>\n By contrast, today\u2019s generative AI technology offers greater realism, functionality and accessibility to content creation than ever before, says AI expert Henry Ajder. Not to mention, of course, a capacity for endless automated possibility.<\/p>\n Past presidents \u201chad to actually have fought in a war to run as a war hero,\u201d Cornog says. Now, they can just generate an image of themselves as one. On a horse \u2014 or no, a battlefield. With an American flag waving behind him and an eagle soaring.<\/p>\n The AI images of Trump shared by him and his administration chase a similarly heroic vision of the president. Potency \u2014 his and the country\u2019s \u2014 is a consistent theme, Cornog added.<\/p>\n Indeed, generative AI allows for an exposure of perhaps uncomfortably intimate inner worlds as people use such technology to illustrate and communicate their \u201cfantasy lives\u201d or cartoonish versions of themselves, says Mitchell Stephens, author of \u201cThe Rise of the Image, the Fall of the Word.\u201d<\/p>\n But it can just as easily fulfill an inverse desire: to depict or reinforce a subjective concept of reality.<\/p>\n \u201cQuite a lot of people are sharing AI-generated content, which is clearly fake but is almost seen as a revelatory kind of representation of someone,\u201d Ajder said. This content feeds a mentality that mutters, \u201cWe all know they\u2019re really like this.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAnd so, even if people know it\u2019s fake,\u201d Ajder said, \u201cthey still see it as kind of reflecting and satisfying a kind of truth \u2014 their truth about what the world is like.\u201d<\/p>\n open image in gallery<\/p>\n US President Donald Trump on day one of the 2025 Ryder Cup (David Davies\/PA) (PA Wire)<\/p>\n The lack of subtlety in Trump\u2019s AI images of himself helps explain their consistent virality. <\/p>\n Commenters can be found lamenting the demise of presidential decorum (\u201cI never thought I\u2019d see the day when the White House is just a joke. This is so embarrassing.\u201d) or relishing those very reactions (\u201cWatching the left explode over this has been a treat.\u201d). <\/p>\n Other responses, even from the president\u2019s base, remain unconvinced (as one X user griped under the White House post of Trump as pope: \u201cI voted for you, but this is weird and creepy. More mass deportations and less of whatever this is.\u201d).<\/p>\n But that is tradition for Trump, who finds no trouble cashing the currency of our attention economy: Whether you cracked a smile or clutched your pearls, he still made you look. <\/p>\n \u201cIn his first administration, he used Twitter<\/a> in a way no president had,\u201d said Martha Joynt Kumar, director of the White House Transition Project, an organization that facilitates the transition between presidents. \u201cWhat they do in this administration is taking it further, as you\u2019ve had an increase in what can be done online.\u201d Or, as one Reddit<\/a> user referred to the president: \u201cTroll in Chief.\u201d<\/p>\n Does Trump really think he should be pope? Does the White House really think him a king? Accuracy isn\u2019t the point, not for a man who frequently arbitrates what counts as truth. Trump’s use of AI sticks to a familiar recipe for bait: crude comedy sprinkled with wishful thinking.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s fine,\u201d Trump said in May, when asked whether the AI-generated post of him as pope diminished the substance of the official White House account. <\/p>\n \u201cHave to have a little fun, don\u2019t you?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your support helps us to tell the story From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":168549,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-168548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=168548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/168548\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/168549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=168548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=168548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=168548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"President](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Trump_AI_Presidential_Imagery_09627.jpg\")
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