On Sunday night, Donald Trump shared a series of images on Truth Social that appeared to show Taylor Swift fans wearing T-shirts that read “Swifty for Trump.” Among the images was a mock “Uncle Sam” poster with Swift's face on it, along with the words, “Taylor wants you to vote for Donald Trump.” Trump wrote, “I agree!” While two of the images Trump shared feature real women who support Trump, most of the women depicted are non-existent; at least 15 are artificially generated portraits.
The image Trump shared was originally posted to X by a number of pro-Trump accounts with large followings, one of which had posted multiple guides on Substack's blog on using generative AI tools. In a response to X, the same account acknowledged that the images Trump reposted from those accounts were generated by AI.
The new images are part of a social media campaign spearheaded by some pro-Trump accounts over the weekend seeking to suggest that Swift's fans, who supported Biden and harshly criticized Trump in 2020, are increasingly turning to him. In reality, there is little evidence that this is true among a significant portion of Swift's fans, who are known as “Swifties.”
“There is no Swifties for Trump movement, but there should be,” one of Trump's Truth Social reposted accounts wrote in the caption of an AI-generated image.
Other pro-Trump accounts have also shared AI-generated images that falsely portray Democratic voter groups, including Black voters, as supporting Trump.
Two of the photos Trump shared Sunday were of a real person, a Liberty University student who did a political communications internship this summer, according to her LinkedIn account. Her “Swifties for Trump” social media content did not garner much attention, with fewer than 1,000 views, but it was shared by major pro-Trump accounts and by Trump himself.
The same pro-Trump accounts also reshared TikToks from female Swift fans who said they would vote for Trump, trying to promote the idea that Swift's fans were rallying in droves to support Trump, but these videos received far fewer views on TikTok than when they were reshared by Trump and his highly followed supporters.
Representatives for the Trump campaign and Swift did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
While Swift has not yet endorsed any candidate in the 2024 presidential election, some of her fans have mobilized to support Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign. A group called “Swifties for Kamala” was launched on social media shortly after President Joe Biden announced in July that he would not run for reelection. The group has more than 61,000 followers on X and is not affiliated with Swift or Harris.
“We don't speak for all Swifties, but we think there's reason we shouldn't need an AI to show our support for Kamala,” the group's co-founder Eileen Kim said in a statement to NBC News.
AI-generated images and videos of Swift have been repeatedly spread this year, ranging from sexually suggestive images that violate X's platform guidelines to images that falsely portray Swift as a Trump supporter.
Throughout his presidency and campaign, Trump has repeatedly shared inflammatory memes created by his online supporters. Until 2021, he shared them on Twitter, but after being banned from the platform that year, he shared them on his own Twitter copycat platform, Truth Social. Trump has since resumed posting on X, with an increase in postings since August 12, when he was interviewed by Elon Musk on the platform. Over the weekend, he posted a fake image of Harris standing in front of a communist symbol on both X and Truth Social.
It's not yet clear whether Sunday's post or image violates any specific laws regarding publicity, likeness, or AI. Swift's home state of Tennessee passed an amendment in March to protect against AI using the likeness of others without permission. Accounts that acknowledged the photo was AI-generated called it satire, but the account that first published the “Uncle Sam” poster with Swift's likeness did not.
David Green, director of civil rights and senior counsel at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told NBC News that the situation, which isn't specific to AI-generated content, could have overlaps with right of publicity laws, which protect people from unauthorized commercial use of their likeness.
“This is probably a stronger case than many because at the root of these claims is false advertising, but it's usually viewed in the context of product advertising,” Green said in an email. “This is just good old-fashioned, low-tech lying.”
