Forget slick campaign ads shot on film — the new weapon of choice for MAGA world is glitchy, glossy, and 100% fake, Alice Marwick wrote for The Bulwark on Friday.
"By visually conjuring political talking points in an instant, genAI enables the right to bring its inflammatory rhetoric to life," Marwick wrote. "If you can prompt a right-wing fantasy, perhaps you can create it."
Researchers have a name for this growing political medium: "slopaganda." And according to a new deep dive, conservatives have embraced AI-generated imagery — from a mocked-up Time cover of Trump crowned as king to deepfakes of Texas Democrat James Talarico singing pro-trans show tunes — in a way the left simply hasn't.
Part of it's political: the Trump administration's cozy relationship with Big Tech and AI investors. But there's an aesthetic angle too. Another Pratt-produced clip shows a suspiciously flawless pilates class of thin, shiny women cheering for a Republican candidate — a stark contrast from the diverse faces that powered Zohran Mamdani's viral mayoral campaign videos in New York.
The White House itself has gotten in on the trend, blasting out AI images casting Trump as Superman, the Pope, a Jedi and even Jesus. That last one led to a public outcry, and Trump officials tried to claim he was simply being depicted as a doctor.
Journalist Shahzeen Khan, who's tracked similar AI-fueled fearmongering targeting Muslim communities abroad, posed a haunting question about the technology's power to shape minds: "How should it shape your voting choices?"
This comes as a number of other scandals emerge in how AI is being used, including a judge accusing the Trump administration of citing a nonexistent, AI-hallucinated case in a recent court filing.