In August 2024, reports circulated widely on the Internet that the US presidential candidate from the Democratic Party was falsifying reports about thousands of rallies in her support. It is alleged that the politician’s subordinates, using artificial intelligence, generated crowds of non-existent people. We checked publications purporting to confirm such statements.
Since August 11, reports have been circulating on the RuNet that there are almost no people at election rallies in support of Kamala Harris, and the crowds in photos and videos from these events are allegedly generated using artificial intelligence (AI). Such publications, based on the illustrative materials they contain, can be divided into three groups.
The first shows one and/or two photos of people waiting for Harris to get off the plane at an airport in Michigan. About one of the pictures on the publication’s Telegram channel Avia.pro (22,000 views at the time of writing this analysis) wrote this: “Harris was accused of using AI to fake crowd sizes. They noticed on the Internet that no people were visible in the reflection of the plane.” Channel "Tucker Carlson for Russia"(57,000 views) stated that "the democrats... forgot to check if the textures were floating somewhere." August 12 channel "Ax Live” (901,000 views) reported that Donald Trump accused his election rival of posting an artificial intelligence-generated photo of a huge crowd of supporters. Similar publications appeared in Telegram channels “Special Operation Z"(75,000 views), "From the scene"(74,000), Full-Time Trading (36,000), "Alexey Pushkov» (13,000), etc. Channel Lomovka (49,000 views) even claimed that he checked one of the images using an AI content detection service and received a positive result.
The second group of posts features a photo purportedly taken at the stadium during one of Harris' rallies. Showman Andrey Bocharov in his Telegram channel “Bocharik (yep, that same one)"(140,000 views) commented on the picture: “A scandal in Asashai. It turned out that at Kamala Harris's performances, they fill in the audience so that it seems that the halls are full. The AI does the finishing touches, but it turns out carelessly and poorly. Trump has a crowd on his rally, and no one is coming to the Democrats.” “The fact that the neural network draws Kamala’s voters scares me personally,” the channel says.Pockets without China"(120,000 views). A political scientist also spoke on this topic Nikolay Starikov (19,000 views): “Kamala Harris’s PR people “filled” the stadium with supporters using a neural network. It turned out to be the “face of democracy.” At the same time, the channelTeledno"(93,000 views including the repost of the publication "Staff Correspondent") added: "Harris' campaign later said the picture with the crooked faces was real. 😂" Similar posts appeared in the channels “Nose"(51,000 views), "Freshness" (43,000), "Investor's office" (38,000), "Brecotin" (14,000), "ZhS Premium"(11,000), as well as on VKontakte (examples here, here And here). In addition, the channelsBocharik (yep, that same one)"(137,000 views) and "Freshness" (47,000) soon shared a themed meme referencing the previous statements.
The bloggers also provide a video that supposedly demonstrates the process of generating a video with Harris supporters. For example, in the Telegram channel Bocharova (135,000 views) it was described as: "The video showing a fake crowd standing next to Kamala Harris as she exited Air Force 2 was created in just ten minutes on a single laptop." This recording was also reported on the TV presenter’s channels. Ruslana Ostashko (113,000 views), "Zuben_co news"(25,000), "Kremlin Mockingbird"(18,000) and PeachBlossom (14,000).
Photos from the plane
On August 10, Trump supporters began distributing a couple of photographs on the English-language segment of the Internet, allegedly proving the vice president was cheating. For example, blogger Chuck Callesto wrote on Social Media X: "Harris Campaign Caught Using Fake Photo of Crowd at Campaign Rally." His tweet received almost 15 million views, and later Trump himself shared a screenshot of the post on the social network Truth Social, who commented write like this:
“Did anyone notice Kamala cheating at the airport? There was no one near the plane, so she “naneuralized” and showed a huge “crowd” of so-called supporters, but they did not exist! It was turned in by a technical employee at the airport when he noticed a fake photo of the crowd. But there was no one there, which was later confirmed by the reflection in the skin of the vice president’s plane. She's a liar. No one was waiting for her, and the “crowd” looked like 10,000 people! The same thing happens with her fake crowds" at performances. This is how Democrats win elections by cheating. And they do even worse with ballot boxes. She should be removed from the election because creating a fake image is election interference. Anyone who does this will cheat in everything!”
In a subsequent post, the ex-president published a photo allegedly taken shortly after Harris landed, and wrote: “Look, we caught her with the fake “crowd.” There was no one there! After some time, Trump stated: “Everything connected with Kamala is fake!”
We are talking about a rally in support of Harris and vice presidential candidate Tim Walz, which took place on August 7 in Detroit, Michigan. On numerous photographs And video, which were filmed from different angles by spectators, film crews groups American TV channels and professional photographers, you can see a large crowd of people. For example, many similar pictures were published on the agency’s website Getty Images. According to local Media, the event was attended by about 15,000 people. BBC correspondent Sumi Somaskanda appreciated number of Harris and Walz supporters: “It was packed and the crowd stretched across the airfield.” Democrat Mallory McMorrow of the Michigan Senate commented Trump's statements with "Uh, what?" and published photos and videos from the rally, which showed many other people. “The crowd created by the AI was very loud, my ears have only just stopped ringing from their imaginary screams,” joked Michigan Democratic Party Chairwoman Lavora Barnes and shared a photo of herself speaking in front of a crowd of people. Concluding that the images were not doctored, came and AFP fact checkers.
According to BBC, the first photo that Trump wrote about appeared on the X social network on the night of August 7-8, Moscow time, his published Harris campaign staffer Bhavik Lathia. According to him, the picture was sent by the director of digital technology at the Michigan headquarters. Ben Sarl. Photo authenticity confirmed Harris campaign representatives at X, and the BBC fact-checking service verified the original image's metadata, which indicated the photo was taken on an iPhone 12 Pro Max on August 7 at 6:28 p.m. local time. "I can confirm that the photo was taken by Harris campaign staff and was not altered in any way by artificial intelligence," a spokesman for the vice president told the BBC. The headquarters staff also sent several other photographs taken by the same person in the same place.
Regarding the verification carried out by the Telegram channel Lomovka, then it cannot be an independent proof and requires additional arguments. The authors of this resource only analyzed the viral image using the service Is It AI? and got the result that with a probability of 79% the image was created by AI. As already wrote “Checked”, the operation of such detectors is imperfect, since they can produce both false positive and false negative results. We uploaded the same photo to Is It AI?, and the service found it difficult to give a definite answer (he estimated the likelihood of using AI at 54%).
Politifact Project paid attentionthat snapshot studied Professor Hani Farid, an image analyst at the University of California, Berkeley. The expert said: “We have not found any evidence that this image was created using AI or has been digitally altered.”
Citing the second viral photo, Internet users indicatethat there is no reflection of the voters standing in front of the board on the trim of Harris's plane. For clarity, Trump supporters have highlighted in red the areas where they believe people should be reflected.
In fact, how explained to The Daily Beast, photographer Andrew Harnick, It's all about perspective. He himself attended the rally and stated that there were many people there: “The crowd was large, and the photographs I took, posted on the Getty website, confirm this.” According to Harnik, he used a zoom lens, which allows you to shoot a subject from afar, but at the same time can give the pictures a “flat” appearance: as if the subject is much closer than it actually is (in this case, the fuselage relative to people). “The plane is actually quite far away from the crowd,” Harnik explained.
The photographer’s words were clearly confirmed by writer Mick West, who published a video edited from two recordings from different angles. “Synchronized video of Harris and Walz arriving in Detroit to a large and very real crowd. Donald Trump claims it's fake. He's lying or he's been deceived." wrote he's in his tweet.
Thus, both disseminated photographs of Harris supporters near the plane were not created by neural networks, as confirmed by numerous media materials and eyewitnesses, professional photographers and image analysis specialists.
Photo from the stadium
In most cases, Russian-language publications do not present the photograph itself, but a screenshot of an English-language post with this photograph and/or its fragments. The caption reads: “There was an energy at the Harris/Walz rally yesterday that I have never seen before. The right really doesn’t like it.” At the same time, in the image, many people sitting in the stands can see distorted faces - one of the main signs of the operation of the neural network. In this regard, Trump supporters once again accused his rival for faking images from her performances.
However, there is no indication that the image was released by Harris' campaign. You can find the original source of this photo either by reverse search in the picture or by keywords from the caption. August 10 on social network X him posted account @Sarcasmcat24. His nickname is Dr. Literaleigh A Pheline (in Russian the play on words can be translated as “Doctor Literally Nokoshka”), and description reads: "Ph.D., M.D., Dr. Pepper." Parody. Kamala is a brat.” Later the author of the profile repeatedly confessedthat it was he who created this image. For example, this is how he replayed left under a tweet from blogger Blair White, who supports Trump and accused Harris of faking the photo: “This is a photo that I generated using AI. Use the zoom and you will see that the faces are not even very well designed. Yep, I run a parody account and I’m glad you liked the post!” @Sarcasmcat24 posted other images created using neural networks, both with Harris, so with Trump.
Thus, the vice president's team did not fake this photo with a crowd of their supporters at the stadium. The original photo was created by a satirical X-account, which its owner has admitted to more than once.
Airplane video
The 12-second video shows computer-generated people appearing in an empty area near Harris' landing plane. At the same time, many neural network artifacts are noticeable in the recording. For example, incoherent text is visible on all banners and posters, the gangway expands to the side, and the ground level rises relative to the side. In addition, at the bottom of the video you can see strange red lines, similar to those that Trump supporters used to outline some of the details in the photo mentioned above. These factors indicate that the video was generated based on exactly that photo with the stroke already applied.
In the lower right corner of the video there is an emblem that says: “Snickers für Linkshänder. Satire”, which translated from German means “Snickers for left-handers.” Satire". This is the name of a German humorous portal, who is present on several social networks, and the desired video “Verified” was found on his account on the social network X (@snicklink). IN description profile is marked “comedian-conspiracy theorist.” There was a recording there published on August 11 and was accompanied by the caption: “Dude, I did this on my laptop in about 10 minutes. Imagine what they could do with a couple million! #Harris." This video later went viral, gaining at least 7 million views on X, and on August 12, Snicklink reported about the requests he receives from the press: “Journalists and fact checkers from Denmark, Greece, Germany, the USA and Brazil have been spamming my poor inbox for 24 hours straight! "Why did you do this?" "What's the point?" "Why are you doing satire?" “Are you a far-right conspiracy theorist?” 🤣 What has the Internet become? We used to have fun here! 😍 (still having fun!).” August 13 Snicklink published new video with the Harris plane: this time, instead of the vice president, God came down the ramp Dionysus from the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics.
Thus, the viral video is in no way connected with Harris’ team and was not published on the social networks of the candidate for the presidency of the United States. The author of the video is the German satirical resource Snickers für Linkshänder, whose works created using AI not the first times distributed on the Internet without appropriate context.
Cover photo: Verified collage / @bensarle (X) / @Sarcasmcat24 (X) / @snicklink (X)
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