Yesterday the BBC’s “Disinformation Correspondent” Marianna Spring and Panorama revealed their top scoop: that “Donald Trump supporters have been creating and sharing AI-generated fake images of black voters to encourage African Americans to vote Republican“. Spring boasted that she had “discovered dozens of deepfakes portraying black people as supporting the former president. There’s no evidence directly linking these images to Trump’s campaign.” The revelations were enough to warrant an investigation piece and a special podcast episode…
On second glance the nefarious deepfakes may not be the conspiracy Spring was looking for. The clearly-watermarked AI images of Trump with black Americans are the creations of a joke account whose Twitter bio states: “Documenting the history of the 45th President of the United States, Donald J. Trump (parody)“. The BBC’s disinformation team must have been horrified to learn that American voters might be duped by tweets saying “Donald Trump was in fact the 4th wise man who brought Jesus gifts after he was born“, or he was “the first person to circumnavigate the Earth” in 1522, as well as starring in Ben-Hur. Images of Trump in the WW1 trenches will be sure to swing the American public…
This comes as BBC Verify launches a new “content credentials” feature to detail whether images have had their “authenticity verified“. Judging by its track record they might want to hire some reporters to fact check their own content…
