Taylor Swift endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for president on Tuesday, citing AI-generated deepfake photographs posted by Donald Trump that appeared to characterize her help for the previous president. Her message triggered a wave of curiosity in voter registration over the following 24 hours.
The favored singer-songwriter, who had beforehand been silent about her stance on the candidates, introduced her endorsement after watching Tuesday night time’s debate between Harris and Trump, saying that the deepfakes Trump promoted “conjured up my fears round AI, and the hazards of spreading misinformation.”
“It introduced me to the conclusion that I must be very clear about my precise plans for this election as a voter,” Swift mentioned. “The best approach to fight misinformation is with the reality.”
Swift’s Instagram publish offered a hyperlink to Vote.gov, a useful resource on voting registration, and roughly 406,000 individuals clicked via to that web site within the subsequent 24 hours, The New York Instances reported Thursday. Vote.gov directs customers to voter registration websites in their very own states, and it is unclear how many individuals really registered.
Nonetheless, the Instances famous, Swift’s hyperlink was liable for greater than half of the roughly 727,000 guests to Vote.gov from Tuesday to Wednesday.
Swift’s endorsement of Harris, the Democratic nominee for president, comes simply weeks after Trump posted on his Fact Social platform that he had accepted Swift’s help. He additionally posted AI-generated deepfake photographs of Swift and her followers, often known as Swifties, seemingly displaying help for the Republican presidential nominee.
The photographs, which Trump topped with the textual content “I settle for,” had been initially posted on X, previously often known as Twitter, by a person who labeled them as satire. One among the pictures reposted on Trump’s Fact Social account had the phrase “satire” within the picture textual content.
Conversely, Trump falsely accused the Harris marketing campaign of utilizing AI to pretend a photograph taken at a rally in August to point out a drastically inflated crowd measurement. However quite a few different movies and images of the occasion confirmed a crowd comparable in measurement to the one proven within the Harris marketing campaign photograph.
Learn extra: Election Deepfakes Are Right here and Higher Than Ever
The development of synthetic intelligence, most notably with the speedy evolution of generative AI instruments over the previous two years, has made it simpler for individuals to generate convincing deepfakes — manipulated photographs, video or audio showing to point out individuals doing or saying issues they did not really say or do. Specialists fear these deepfakes may have an effect on how or even when individuals vote forward of the November presidential election.
One of the best ways to defend towards deepfakes, specialists say, is to be skeptical and to have a watch for element. AI-generated deepfake movies, as an illustration, could have quirks in movement, lighting or phrasing. It is also vital to judge whether or not the supply is respected and to do some fact-checking of your individual.
The Trump marketing campaign did not reply to a request for remark.
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