- Images of Donald Trump with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., which have been circulating on social media, are fake, created using artificial intelligence (AI) software.
- The deceptive photos were disseminated by an account named Dom Lucre on the social media platform X, previously known as Twitter.
- There’s no historical evidence that Trump ever met Dr. King, and the images created by AI were unrealistic considering Dr. King was assassinated when Trump was only 21 years old.
- Dom Lucre’s account became notorious when it shared child abuse material and was consequently taken down, then reinstated by X’s owner Elon Musk, sparking widespread controversy.
In recent times, a fabricated image presenting Donald Trump and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. together has been shared on social media platforms, including X, the former Twitter. The image, falsely suggesting a historical meeting between the two, was generated with advanced AI software and shared by an account named Dom Lucre. However, no evidence supports the assertion that Trump, then only 21 years old, ever encountered the civil rights leader, who was assassinated in 1968.
The account from which the photo originated had been the subject of international scrutiny in the past. The X platform management previously suspended Dom Lucre’s account after it distributed content involving child abuse. Surprisingly, the suspension was overturned upon Elon Musk’s intervention, resulting in a series of events that led worldwide regulators to demand more transparency regarding X’s modus operandi.
This is not the first instance of misleading photos of the former U.S. President circulating on social media. Earlier in July, about two phony images featuring Trump and MLK were disseminated through X, owing to right-wing influencers. The very watermark on the manufactured image reveals its creator – an account named Trump\_History45, known for creating contrived historical scenarios involving the former president.
Though the exact software which created the Trump-King image is unknown, AI-creation tools such as DALL-E, Stability Diffusion, and Midjourney are popular for producing photo-realistic images from simple text prompts. The widespread accessibility of such advanced AI technology poses an increasing challenge in distinguishing real images from digitally manipulated ones in our interconnected world.