One of the things being litigated in this presidential campaign is whether the crowds at rallies are even real.
At a Detroit aircraft hangar last week, the Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Harris, and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, stepped off Air Force Two and were greeted by thousands of supporters. NPR's Tamara Keith was there to see it.
There were 15,000 people at the rally, according to the Harris campaign. Photos and videos by attendees and media organizations captured the crowd from many angles.
But former President Donald Trump and his supporters have falsely claimed that the crowd seen in a photo of the rally in front of Harris' plane was a product of generative artificial intelligence. On Sunday, Trump made the nonsensical claim that the very real crowd at the event was a fabrication.
"Has anyone noticed that Kamala CHEATED at the airport?" reads one of his posts on Truth Social. "There was nobody at the plane, and she 'A.I.'d' it, and showed a massive 'crowd' of so-called followers, BUT THEY DIDN’T EXIST!"
When a reporter asked him Wednesday about why he made the claim given that it was proved false, Trump did not acknowledge that his claim had been untrue. "Well I can't say what was there, who was there," responded Trump in an exchange that was televised by Fox News. "I can tell you about ours — we have the biggest crowds ever in the history of politics."
The Trump campaign did not respond to a request for comment.
The Harris campaign confirmed to NPR that the photo in question was taken by a campaign staffer and was not modified by AI.
The "liar's dividend"
The refusal to accept basic, verifiable facts has some observers concerned about a repeat of 2020 false claims of a stolen election if Trump loses.
Scholars who study deepfakes have pointed out that the existence of the technology means people can try to claim that authentic videos and photos are fake. Back in 2018, law professors Robert Chesney and Danielle Citron even coined a term for this phenomenon, calling it the "liar's dividend."
Hany Farid, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley who specializes in forensic images, ran the Harris campaign rally photo through two computer models to see whether there were any signs of patterns consistent with generative artificial intelligence or manipulation — and found none.
"This is an example where just the mere existence of deepfakes and generative AI allows people to deny reality," Farid said. "You don't like the fact that Harris-Walz had such a big crowd? No problem. Photos are fake. Videos are fake. Everything's fake."
Farid said such claims muddy the waters, which "is a pretty good strategy if you want to create doubt among the electorate."
Sen. Bernie Sanders, who's an independent but caucuses with Democrats, said in a statement on Tuesday that Trump's false comments about the Harris rally are a sign that he is laying the groundwork to claim the election was stolen if he loses.
"If you can convince your supporters that thousands of people who attended a televised rally do not exist, it will not be hard to convince them that the election returns in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and elsewhere are 'fake' and 'fraudulent,'" Sanders wrote.
The rally photo looked unusual, Farid acknowledged, due to the lighting and compression. But the features that social media users pointed to as evidence that the photo was inauthentic were not accurate, Farid said. The distorted hands that some social media posts pointed out were a product of a low-resolution version of the photo circulating online.
Farid said he is troubled by the continued debate over the veracity of the photo online, given the lack of evidence that it is anything but authentic and given the fact that there are abundant photos and videos showing the size of the crowd at the rally.
"This is a photo of an event in one city on one day," Farid said. "I mean, what hope do we have to actually tackle complex problems in society if we can't agree on this?"
Democracy without shared facts
It's a problem for citizens of a democracy to have a blurred understanding of what is real and what is staged, said University of California, Los Angeles law professor Rick Hasen during a panel discussion hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation on Monday.
"If voters tend to disbelieve anything they see and think that whatever they see might be faked, then they're going to distrust their own instincts as to what the truth is to be able to make competent decisions," Hasen said.
In response to one of Trump's false posts about the rally photo, the Harris campaign posted a video from the Detroit rally with the caption, "In case you forgot @realdonaldtrump: This is what a rally in a swing state looks like."
While not in the same league as claiming a crowd was fabricated, the Harris campaign has made its own social media posts about a Trump rally that gave an inaccurate impression. As Trump held a rally in Atlanta this month, the Harris campaign highlighted what looked like a larger crowd for Harris days earlier at the same venue. But the images of Trump's crowd were taken when the venue was still filling up before all seats were taken.
Trump's false claim that Harris "cheated" with a fake crowd likely resonated with his supporters who also believe the false claim that Democrats stole the 2020 presidential election, said Mert Bayar, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Washington's Center for an Informed Public.
"It's part of a belief system of not trusting the other party," Bayar said.
Furthermore, as the presidential race has shifted with Harris and Walz at the top of the Democratic ticket, many Trump supporters are looking for evidence that their candidate still has the upper hand.
"The vast majority of misinformation is offered as a service for people to maintain their beliefs in face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary," wrote Mike Caulfield, who has studied how rumors spread, in his newsletter, The End(s) of Argument, about the false claims about the Harris rally image.
As Caulfield warns, it's difficult for people to make sense of reality in an honest way when we are "flooded with cheap fabricated or misrepresented evidence" as happened in the aftermath of the 2020 election and is happening again during this campaign season.
Transcript
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
One of the things being litigated in this presidential campaign is whether the crowds at rallies are real.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: So Michigan, I ask you, are you ready to make your voices heard?
(CHEERING)
SHAPIRO: That was the scene in a Detroit aircraft hangar last week after Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Governor Tim Walz, stepped off Air Force Two and were greeted by thousands of very real supporters. But former President Donald Trump and his supporters have tried to claim that a photo of the real crowd was fake. NPR's Jude Joffe-Block is here to explain why this matters. Hey there.
JUDE JOFFE-BLOCK, BYLINE: Hi.
SHAPIRO: Describe this photo and what Trump said about it.
JOFFE-BLOCK: Yeah. So the photo shows a crowd waving signs in front of the vice president's plane. And it's been circulating on social media since last week. It was taken by a Harris campaign staffer. And it's true that the image looks a little unusual due to the lighting, but the crowd it shows is consistent with video footage, other photos from the event and NPR correspondent Tamara Keith's account.
Yet Trump supporters on social media for days have been claiming the photo was made by generative artificial intelligence to make it appear like more people were at the rally. And then on Sunday, Trump echoed those claims on his own post, even going so far to claim that there was no real crowd at all waiting for the plane, which is clearly untrue.
SHAPIRO: Well, what do experts who study AI images say about this photo and the larger implications of these kinds of claims, that real images are deepfakes?
JOFFE-BLOCK: Yeah. I talked to Hany Farid at UC Berkeley. He specializes in image forensics. And when he first saw the image online, he also thought it was a bit strange looking. So he ran through - it through two models to test whether there were any platforms consistent with - any patterns - I'm sorry - consistent with generative AI or manipulation. And he found no evidence of that. He told me he's worried about the bigger implications of how people are responding to the existence of this technology and how social media amplifies it.
HANY FARID: This is an example where just the mere existence of deepfakes and generative AI allows people to deny reality. You don't like the fact that Harris-Walz had such a big crowd? No problem. Photos are fake. Videos are fake. Everything's fake.
JOFFE-BLOCK: And scholars who study deepfakes coined a phrase a few years ago about this exact phenomenon. They call it the liar's dividend.
SHAPIRO: Well, how does this example fit with what we've seen more broadly about how conspiracy theories tied to the election are spreading?
JOFFE-BLOCK: So one thing we know about misinformation is that people are especially willing to accept false information when it fits into their worldview. And the Harris-Walz campaign has been enjoying some momentum and larger rallies, so for those who support Trump, there's an appetite for an alternative explanation of what's going on. And that's one reason the false AI claims about the Harris rally photos were able to take off.
And to be clear, while it's not the same as claiming real images are fake, the Harris campaign trolled Trump with social media images of empty seats at his Georgia rally earlier this month. But those images were from before the rally started, when seats were still filling up. And while they might be trolling, those images could create an impression that attendance at Trump's event was lower than it actually was.
SHAPIRO: That's NPR's Jude Joffe-Block. Thank you.
JOFFE-BLOCK: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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