Ron de Santis deepfake shows Donald Trump hugging Dr Fauci

Occurred: June 2023

Ron de Santis' US presidential campaign released a video on Twitter with fake images of Donald Trump hugging and kissing his former medical advisor Dr Anthony Fauci in an attempt to depict Trump as a supporter of Fauci’s policies combatting COVID-19. 

The video criticised Trump for not firing Fauci, who was seen by many US conservatives as pushing too hard for COVID-19 restrictions, and was reputedly viewed as a bete noire by Trump.

The video interspersed apparently real footage of Trump at press conferences and interviews, with deepfake images, making the latter harder to detect. 

It also failed to disclose its use of AI. 

The DeSantis campaign team chose not to respond to allegations that the images had been artificially generated. 

Deepfake

Deepfakes (a portmanteau of 'deep learning' and 'fake') are images, videos, or audio which are edited or generated using artificial intelligence tools, and which may depict real or non-existent people. They are a type of synthetic media.

Source: Wikipedia 🔗

System 🤖

Documents 📃

Operator: Ron de Santis; Twitter
Developer: Ron de Santis

Country: USA

Sector: Politics

Purpose: Damage reputation

Technology: Deepfake - image; Machine learning
Issue: Mis/disinformation; Transparency