Wayne L. Smith, an engineer in the Washington, D.C., area, scoffed at an image he saw last week of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump happily standing among a group of smiling black people. When he saw the image, he immediately felt uneasy.
“Everything he’s doing to try to get black people to like him is fake,” Smith said. “Why isn’t that photo fake too?” It just didn’t feel right. ”
Smith’s instincts about this photo were correct. The image was created by Trump supporter and conservative radio host Mark Kaye, who used artificial intelligence to create the image for his 1 million Facebook followers to see. He admitted that he posted it on social media so that he could do so. Kaye did not respond to NBC News’ request for comment.
“I’m not taking pictures of things that are actually happening. I’m a storyteller,” Kaye told BBC News, which tracked the source of the images. He added: “If someone votes in any way because of one photo they saw on a Facebook page, that’s the problem with that person, not the post itself.”
The Trump campaign did not respond to NBC News’ requests for comment for this story, but a campaign official said last week that “the only people using AI to interfere in elections are President Trump’s opponents.” The Trump campaign has nothing to do with these AI images. Nor can you control what other people create and post. ”
Trump has made some progress with black voters this election cycle. An NBC News poll released in February found that 16% of people said they would consider voting for Trump if the vote were held today. By comparison, 12% supported Trump in 2020.
Still, the photo production is the latest in a series of troubling efforts by Mr. Trump, his campaign and supporters to show a connection with black voters, including claiming they are persecuted by the legal system. was.
“They want our votes, but they don’t know how to get them,” Smith said. “Biden is not a peach, but neither is Trump. And they know it. That’s why they’re trying to do everything. Trick. To deceive. And to me, they’re trying to insult us and make the situation worse. It’s only making things worse.”
Rhonda Sherrod, a Democratic candidate for the Illinois Senate this year, said such efforts to appeal to black voters rely on racist stereotypes and can be derogatory. . In a recent NBC News focus group with likely Black voters, all participants generally agreed that President Trump’s comments can often be racist.
“I was indicted for nothing, for nothing,” Trump told a group of black conservatives before the South Carolina primary last month. “And a lot of people said that’s why black people like me, because black people have been so hurt and discriminated against. In fact, they saw me as discriminated against. That was pretty cool, but maybe there’s something there.”
Meanwhile, Calvin Lawrence, IBM’s chief training officer for responsible and trustworthy AI, said these efforts to explain black voters’ support for Trump are a reflection of what he has said and done in the past. He said it could also appeal to dissatisfied white voters.
“What about the white independents who don’t like him and aren’t going to vote for him just because they think he’s a racist?” Lawrence said. “When you see AI-generated deepfake videos and images involving Black people, they’re also targeting white voters and saying, ‘Look! I’m not a racist. No. He’s not a racist.” They’re using AI on a massive scale. ”
President Trump has boasted that in addition to the AI-generated photos, black people will connect with him by having their mugshots taken.
President Trump told a black conservative group, “Here’s a picture of my face.” “We’ve all seen the mug shot, and you know who embraced it more than anyone else? The black population. You see, they’re making shirts and selling them for $19 each. That’s pretty amazing — millions by the way.”
In February, the day after Trump and his company were ordered to pay a $453 million fine for real estate fraud, President Trump released a $399 limited-edition Never Surrender high-top gold shoe with American flag detailing. Sneakers” was announced. Fox News contributor Raymond Arroyo said in February that President Trump’s announcement of gold sneakers would appeal to black voters, who “love sneakers.”
These efforts are “nothing more than bigotry masked as a movement,” said Lana Epting, executive director of the progressive grassroots group MoveOn. “Black voters have great concerns about specific issues like the economy, safety, and health care.”
Ray Richardson, a former public servant in Atlanta, agreed. “Donald Trump views me and my black vote as a cheap whore on the street corner,” Richardson said. “I want the John Lewis Voting Rights Act to pass, I want criminal justice reform to pass. He has no regard for my intelligence or my interests at all. It’s insulting and disrespectful.”
How will artificial intelligence impact Black voters and the electorate overall?
For many, the dishonest use of AI is particularly worrying. Artificial intelligence expert Elizabeth M. Adams told NBC News that Kaye’s AI-generated image of Trump is typical of “weaponizing or misusing the purpose of a tool.” Ta.
But it wasn’t a surprise to Adams, CEO of EMA Advisory Services, a company focused on the responsible use of AI.
“Artificial intelligence is actually training computers to think just like humans, but at a much faster pace and faster,” she says. “And when it’s weaponized in incidents like this, it’s also a mirror to society. It’s all about what people think, the prejudices that people have.”
It’s also troubling, Adams says. “It’s very unfortunate, but that’s what happens when you don’t have the right vision for how AI should be used,” Adams said in a phone interview from a conference in Saudi Arabia. “If there were bad guys before AI, they just use the tools and continue to be bad guys.”
IBM’s Lawrence wrote a book called “Hidden in White Sight: How AI Empowers and Deepens Systemic Racism,” which was published last year. He said for the past four years he has been warning about the misuse of AI. Lawrence said he feels his own concerns and more are expressed in Trump and his supporters.
Lawrence said the big picture won’t affect black voters, who “know what President Trump stands for.” “The larger goal is the long-term impact of deepfakes to create a zero-trust society, where people no longer believe what you say or see. In a zero-trust society, truth is indistinguishable from falsehood. Truth erodes.”
He cited the 2020 killing of George Floyd as an example. “What if the public thought that video of that woman was a deepfake? What if they thought it was generated by an AI?” He talked about the phone video. “If people didn’t believe what they saw, would we have a social justice movement?”
An analysis published last month by the AI Democracy Project found that half of the answers given to political questions by AI chatbots such as ChatGPT4 and Google Gemini were completely inaccurate.
Adams and Lawrence said this is just the beginning of the influx of AI into elections. That’s concerning to Sherrod, a Chicago psychologist who ran for state Senate this year.
“It’s going to be a painful political season,” said Sherrod, author of the 2021 book “Survive, Heal, Evolve: Essays of Love, Compassion, Healing and Affirmation for Black People.” “Democracy’s legitimacy is at stake in this cycle.”
Despite some companies having policies in place against such behavior, the uncertainty of a campaign involving racial background and potentially misleading information and the uncertainty of Mr. Trump’s return to the White House continues to grow. Sherrod said it could be a huge blow to black voters.
“From a psychological standpoint, many of us are already tired. We are exposed to so much information, and there are so many different sources of information, including AI, that black people are psychologically exhausted. We have to protect ourselves,” she said. “Often times when we find something that bothers us in one respect, it means we need to look at other sources to determine whether it is reliable.” It’s unfortunate that you have to go through that, but that’s the world we live in. But it’s worth going through to make sure we have the right people in the White House.”
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