Conspiracy theorists claim Harris is using AI to fake her campaign crowds – it’s utter nonsense
Right-wingers are falsely claiming the Harris campaign used AI to fake a picture of a packed campaign rally. (Getty/Canva)
Conspiracy theorists – spurred on by Donald Trump – are running wild on social media claiming that the Kamala Harris campaign somehow used AI tools to fake a huge crowd of supporters during a campaign event.
Right-wing users on social media, including presidential nominee Donald Trump, claimed that a video of Harris greeting a massive crowd of supporters at the Detroit Metro Airport was fake because of a reflection in the hull of a plane.
Posting on his social media platform, TruthSocial, Trump falsely claimed that Kamala Harris “cheated” by editing in the crowd using AI (Artificial Intelligence) tools, further claiming that the people “didn’t exist.”
“She’s a CHEATER,” he wrote. “She had NOBODY waiting, and the ‘crowd’ looked like 10,000 people! Same thing is happening with her fake ‘crowds’ at her speeches.
“This is the way the Democrats win Elections, by CHEATING – and they’re even worse at the Ballot Box.”
The false theory quickly caught wind and began spreading across social media platforms, including TikTok, in which Trump supporters parroted the claim about the plane’s reflection. One video on the platform gained upwards of 3 million views.
Fact-checking watchdog Snopes quickly addressed the claims in a post on Monday (12 August), writing that the photo is authentic and that it had not been edited.
A member of the Harris-Walz campaign confirmed that the picture had been taken by a staff member, while the photo’s metadata – underlying information about the digital footprint of a photo – confirmed it was unaltered.
The original photo was shared in early August by various users online, including political strategist Rachel Bitecofer, and was eventually picked up by anti-Harris forums and subreddits which claimed that you “can tell it was photoshopped.”
Not only does the metadata confirm that it was taken during the campaign rally, but Snopes noted that the crowd did not have the typical indicators of an AI-generated image, such as inhuman characteristics or unrecognisable facial features.
Furthermore, an AI-detection tool determined the image was “96 per cent human.”
Zooming in on the crowd shows that several of the attendees’ phone screens show them recording the plane in the distance – a detail which would not be possible to create using AI.
Unsurprisingly too, this wasn’t the only picture taken during the event. Cross-examination between several of the clips and videos posted from the event, as well as an article from the BBC, prove that the campaign rally was real.
The Harris-Walz campaign’s official X account has since taken the opportunity to poke fun at the AI claims by sharing a video clip of comedian Stephen Colbert claiming that Trump was having a “thermonuclear pants-pocalypse” over Kamala Harris’ crowd sizes, along with other relevant TV clips.
