Donald Trump has acknowledged that images posted online depicting Taylor Swift endorsing him for president, and Swift fans purportedly endorsing him, are fake, but he doesn't seem worried the pop star will sue, saying all the AI images were “made by other people.”
Trump addressed the controversy during an interview with Fox Business Network's Grady Trimble. During the show, which aired on Wednesday, Trimble asked Trump, “Are you worried that Taylor Swift is going to sue you?” (via Mediaite).
Trump responded, “I don't know anything about them other than somebody created them. I didn't create them. All of these things were created by other people.”
In the interview, Trump said he too has been a victim of AI deepfakes: “AI is always going to be very dangerous in that way. It's happened to me. They're making me speak, and I'm speaking perfectly, I mean perfectly about AI, and promoting other products and things. It's kind of a dangerous place out there.”
Neither Swift nor her representatives have commented on Trump's fake endorsement, and as of Thursday morning, Trump's Truth Social post about Swift was still available on the platform.
On Sunday, President Trump posted several AI-generated images to his Truth social account of women wearing “Swifties for Trump” shirts. (Two photos in Trump's post were identical, showing the same fan wearing a T-shirt that read “Swifties for Trump.”) Another AI image showed Swift dressed as Uncle Sam with the message, “Taylor wants you to vote for Donald Trump.” Trump captioned the post, “I agree!”
Swift has yet to publicly endorse a candidate in the 2024 US presidential election. She supported Joe Biden in 2020 and criticized Trump in tweets following his response to the protests that erupted following the killing of George Floyd that year.
