Trump wrongly claims photos of crowd at Harris stop in Detroit were fabricated with artificial intelligence

Thousands of people have attended his campaign events.

According to the Harris campaign’s tally, 12,000 people turned out for rallies in Philadelphia and Eau Claire, Wisconsin, last week, followed by 15,000 in Glendale, Arizona. On Saturday in Las Vegas, more than 12,000 people were inside a college stadium when police halted admission because people were getting sick while waiting outside in the extreme 109-degree heat. About 4,000 people were waiting in line when the doors closed.

An Associated Press reporter who covered Harris’ events in Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona and Nevada witnessed the crowds of people in attendance.

Trump promoted his false claims in consecutive posts on his social media site on Sunday.

“Has anyone noticed that Kamala CHEATED at the airport? No one was on the plane, and she did it with AI and showed a massive crowd of supposed followers BUT THEY DIDN’T EXIST!” she wrote. She included a post from someone else who made similar allegations about photo manipulation.

A minute later, Trump posted: “Look, we got her with a fake ‘crowd.’ No one was there!” He included a photo of the crowd that was partially in the shade and partially exposed to the sun.

Harris’ campaign confirmed Monday that the disputed photo was taken by a staffer and was not altered in any way using AI.

Hany Farid, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley who specializes in digital forensics and disinformation, analyzed the photo using two generative artificial intelligence models trained to detect patterns and found no evidence of manipulation. The models were developed by GetReal Labs, a company Farid co-founded.

Farid, who responded in an email on Monday, said he compared several versions of the photo and the only alteration he detected was a simple change in brightness or contrast, and perhaps increased sharpness. He said many other images and videos from last Wednesday’s event show the same basic scene.

Trump began spreading false theories about Harris’ campaign photo a few days after he held a news conference at his Florida estate on Thursday and was asked about crowds at his Democratic rival’s campaign rallies. Trump said no one draws crowds as big as he does.

“I’ve spoken before the biggest crowds. Nobody has spoken before bigger crowds than I have,” Trump said at the news conference, his first since Harris became the Democratic presidential nominee.

He went on to falsely compare the crowd that attended his speech in front of the White House on January 6, 2021, to the crowd that attended Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech on August 28, 1963, at the Lincoln Memorial.

But King drew far more people. About 250,000 people attended the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where King gave his speech, according to the National Park Service. The Associated Press reported in 2021 that there were at least 10,000 people at Trump’s speech.

Some of Trump’s top advisers and supporters have been urging the former president to focus his criticism on Harris’ policies and talk more about the border and the economy.

“Stop questioning the size of their crowds,” was the advice offered by former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., during an appearance on Fox News on Monday.

Harris’ campaign attacked Trump on a variety of issues in an email Monday titled “9 days since Trump’s last event in a key state.” The note included a bullet point that read: “He is very upset about the size of the crowds, claiming it is all fake and AI generated. (Maybe if he campaigned he would get crowds too?)”