When pop star Taylor Swift posted her much-anticipated endorsement of Kamala Harris for president on Instagram this week, she explained that the other candidate, Donald Trump, pushed her to be crystal clear about how she plans to vote. Trump recently reposted on his social media site Truth Social doctored images falsely purporting to show Swift and blonde-haired fans endorsing his campaign instead.

As Swift noted, the images are part of a wave of online content known as “deepfakes” that are generated by emerging artificial intelligence, or AI, in order to manipulate public discourse and trick people into believing scams. Such content can be found across the internet, but deepfakes proliferate on networks with little moderation, such as Trump’s Truth Social or Elon Musk’s X.

“Recently I was made aware that AI of ‘me’ falsely endorsing Donald Trump’s presidential run was posted to his site,” Swift wrote in her endorsement of Harris. “It really conjured up my fears around AI, and the dangers of spreading misinformation.”

Thanks to rapid advances in AI technology, “deepfake” videos, images, voice recordings and other meme-ready content that falsely impersonate politicians and celebrities are now a fact of life. With Congress sharply divided along party lines and no laws specifically addressing hyper-realistic, AI-generated imposters and scams on the books, federal regulators and state lawmakers are scrambling to catch up.

Some of Musk’s own fans recently learned about the dangers of deepfakes the hard way after clicking on a fake but convincing video of the controversial tech billionaire promoting an investment scam. The video received tens of thousands of views on social media platforms such as Facebook, and victims reported losing thousands of dollars to unknown........

© Truthout