The lame AI meme election
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Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios
Fears that AI could drown the truth with fakery in this election cycle are receding, for now, in the face of a different reality: For now, AI imagery is just another meme style.
Why it matters: Yes, we're being flooded with crap, but it's recognizable crap — mostly being used with a wink, and only likely to fool the truly gullible.
Driving the news: Donald Trump's return to X last week — the platform that used to be his presidential megaphone, back when it was known as Twitter — coincided with his resharing a torrent of AI-generated images.
- There was the one showing Kamala Harris addressing a lookalike throng of cartoon communists with a giant red hammer-and-sickle banner looming over the arena.
- Or the video of improbably slimmed-down versions of Trump and Elon Musk in a swivel-hipped dance duet.
- Over on his Truth Social network, Trump posted a collage of images — many seemingly AI-generated — suggesting there is a large movement of Taylor Swift fans who support him. (There isn't.)
Zoom out: Like so much of the AI art out there today, these fakes share a monotonously glowy, glossy aesthetic — an easily identifiable "AI look" that became a cliche not long after its birth in the summer of 2022, right before the arrival of ChatGPT.
- It's "an odd blend of cartoon and dreamscape," as Caroline Mimbs Nyce writes in the Atlantic: "The colors are bright and saturated, the people are beautiful, and the lighting is dramatic. Much of the imagery appears blurred or airbrushed, carefully smoothed like frosting on a wedding cake."
Between the lines: Most of the time, there's little room to mistake these manufactured images for anything but jokes and satire.
- The prevalence of ironic humor on social media also gives the promoters of these memes an easy out when accused of spreading lies.
- That's how Musk could get away with posting a video of Harris with doctored audio in her AI "voice" describing herself as a "deep state puppet."
- Yet when Trump posts "I accept!" over bogus pics of adulatory Swifties, it's not so easy to tell whether he's in on the joke.
The intrigue: The culture of online forums like X is relatively insular, and what gets a rise out of the crowd there doesn't always go over as well with a mass audience.
- Jokey AI-made memes — like other devices popular in MAGA forums, such as the "NPC Wojak" face — often come off as eccentric or bizarre when transplanted beyond their native turf.
- That's one reason the Democrats' framing of Trump, JD Vance and the GOP as "weird" has been able to stick.
Our thought bubble: The cliches of today's AI imagery have spread and worn out so quickly that they will inevitably become an aesthetic marker of this moment for future creators.
- Just as grainy color video recalls the '80s or gray-background pages bring the early web era to mind, glowing AI-style tableaux will scream "2024."
The other side: The spread of AI images can lead the public to cynically doubt everything it sees.
- That uncertainty can then be readily exploited to undermine truthful images — as when Trump wrongly claimed that photos of a large crowd greeting Harris on a runway had been "A.I.'d."
- The danger of AI-driven misinformation — like the phony calls in President Biden's voice that aimed to discourage turnout in the New Hampshire primary — could peak in the period immediately before Election Day, when there's less time to combat lies.
The bottom line: For the moment, AI — far from deceiving us en masse — is just bringing down the online neighborhood.
- That's good news for the vitality of the public sphere, but bad news for AI's brand reputation.
