GOP leaders keep using AI deepfakes as political rebuttals

On Saturday, Oct. 18, nearly 7 million Americans gathered in the streets to protest what they view as the machinations of a tyrannical government: The president's deployment of national guard troops to patrol "dangerous" cities, the movement of masked immigration agents tasked with rounding up undocumented residents, and, what many see as an authoritarian power grab across the three branches of government.

At more than 2,700 No Kings rallies held in cities small and large, protesters demanded President Donald Trump be held accountable to the people, harkening back to the foundational tenets of the American Revolution. In an Air Force One interview following the day's events, Trump dismissed the demands of protesters, calling the attendees a "whacked out" joke. "I’m not a king. I work my ass off to make our country great," he said.

He didn't stop there. Taking to Truth Social, the president shared a clearly AI-generated video, depicting a military jet emblazoned with the phrase "King Trump." The aircraft, piloted by an eerily proportioned President Trump in a golden crown, then takes to the skies to fly over a group of city protesters. The jet opens its fuselage and... appears to rain down excrement on the gathered crowd.

The video is soundtracked to Kenny Loggins' "The Danger Zone," made famous in the Academy Award-winning film Top Gun. "This is an unauthorized use of my performance of ‘Danger Zone.' Nobody asked me for my permission, which I would have denied, and I request that my recording on this video is removed immediately," said Loggins in a statement to Variety after the post went viral.

The video is just the latest of numerous deepfaked videos and AI slop shared by the president — and not even the only AI video Trump posted that day, resharing another King Trump clip with a song by band Avenged Sevenfold. In the past, Trump has come under fire for resharing AI-generated content, the use of copyrighted music without permission, and, unsurprisingly, a combination of the two. Public comments and legal threats from artists have yet to stop the country's leader. In addition to AI memes that littered the campaign trail, Trump has even shared deepfaked, even racist, videos of his political opponents while sitting in the Oval Office.

As part of a larger, right-wing social media strategy featuring increasingly questionable content, Trump and fellow GOP leaders have been on a spree of sharing AI-generated content. Last week, the official Senate Republicans X account posted a video which depicted an AI deepfake of Minority Leader Chuck Schumer saying the government shutdown has benefited Democrats (the quote was real, but the video of Schumer saying it was not). In the weeks prior, the Trump administration plastered claims that the federal shutdown was the result of a scheme by the "Radical Left," in what could be a violation of the Hatch Act.

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The posts have been the center of White House press room debates and mass fact checks by misinformation watchdogs. Meanwhile, Trump has been riding on the support of Big Tech's biggest names, including the leaders of the country's biggest generative AI developers. The combination has spurred concerns about the blurring of political satire and political misinformation, and whether or not the social media posts of the nation's political leaders should be more contained.

At a news conference on Monday, Speaker Mike Johnson defended the use of AI by the president. "The president uses social media to make the point. You can argue he’s probably the most effective person who’s ever used social media for that," said Johnson. "He is using satire to make a point. He is not calling for the murder of his political opponents."