The artificial intelligence-generated image of Taylor Swift endorsing Donald Trump, which the singer said inspired her to endorse Kamala Harris for president this week, came from an unlikely place.
The image, which caused controversy in August after being shared by the former president on Truth Social, originally circulated with text reading, “Taylor wants you to vote for Joe Biden,” and was posted in a pro-Biden Facebook group with just 8,000 members in December 2023. That post was viewed by NBC News. A reverse-image search conducted by NBC News did not find any earlier incidences of the image being posted online.
After the pro-Biden image featuring the AI-generated Swift was first posted on Facebook, it began to travel around the pro-Biden internet, particularly among Gen X and baby boomer supporters of the then-candidate. The Facebook group it was initially posted in is largely a place for Democrats to share memes and information in support of Biden and against Trump.
The image also traveled to X and Instagram’s messaging platform, Threads. S. E. Hinton, author of “The Outsiders,” shared it on X in December. It was posted in a liberal subreddit the same month.
“I am a Boomer for Biden,” one X post of the image was captioned in January.
The image’s creator, a Democrat, asked NBC News to keep his identity private, wanting to avoid backlash. Inspired by Swift’s 2020 endorsement of Biden, he said he used a generative AI platform to create an image from the text prompt “Taylor Swift as Uncle Sam,” then used Photoshop to add text over it.
On Aug. 17, around nine months after it was posted with the pro-Biden text, a pro-Trump X account with over 340,000 followers posted an edited version that read, “Taylor wants you to vote for Donald Trump.” The X account did not respond to a request for comment about whether it edited the image itself or where it came from. The next day, Trump posted a screenshot of the X post on his Truth Social account with the caption, “I accept!”
Decision 2024
“I woke up one morning and I got a text message from somebody who sent me a picture of the altered version and said, ‘Was this you?’ I was like, ‘Yeah that’s an altered version of my original,’” the person who created the AI image of Swift endorsing Biden told NBC News in a phone interview. “I didn’t think much of it until I sat down and started looking at the news. It started blowing up from there, with people saying Taylor might sue him and I thought, ‘Holy crap, what did I do?’”
On Tuesday, after the presidential debate between Trump and Harris, Swift posted an endorsement for Harris on Instagram. In the caption, she cited the AI-generated image Trump posted as one of the reasons why she wanted to make her stance known publicly.
“Recently I was made aware that AI of ‘me’ falsely endorsing Donald Trump’s presidential run was posted to his site. It really conjured up my fears around AI, and the dangers of spreading misinformation,” Swift wrote. “It brought me to the conclusion that I need to be very transparent about my actual plans for this election as a voter. The simplest way to combat misinformation is with the truth.”
Swift included a link to the official voter registration website in the Instagram Story announcing her endorsement. In the 24 hours that followed, more than 400,000 people clicked the link from her account.
“I agree with Taylor that AI, when used by bad actors, can be a danger to democracy,” the AI image creator said. “If this leads to stronger regulation, I’m not only happy to comply, but I’ll be happy that it makes the world a safer place.”
The AI image creator, an artist, said he initially started experimenting with AI to stay in step with technological advancement he perceived as a threat to his career. He said he realized it could be a useful way to create political satire.
His public Facebook group is where he posts content in support of Democrats, starting with Biden’s presidential campaign in 2020 and now in support of Harris’ presidential campaign.
“I didn’t think it would go down this way,” he said. “The intent of it was to boost support for Joe Biden because his communication was poor and his polls were low and Trump was a looming threat and I just couldn’t stand idly by.”
This story first appeared on NBCNews.com. More from NBC News:
