Busted: Trump posts — then deletes — doctored AI image of Harris with Diddy

In the wake of rap star Sean "Diddy" Combs' arrest on sex trafficking and racketeering charges, former President Donald Trump took to his Truth Social account to post a picture of Vice President Kamala Harris with Diddy.

There's just one problem, reported NBC News: the image wasn't real. It was created by artificial intelligence software.

Specifically, the AI image, noted the report, was a modified version of a real 2001 photo of Harris with talk show host Montel Williams, whom she dated for a short period, with Williams' face edited to be replaced with Diddy's.

Trump, who has posed for photos with Diddy, later deleted the fake Harris/Diddy image from his Truth Social account.

ALSO READ: The simple yet powerful way Tim Walz just exposed Donald Trump

With AI-generated images becoming more and more sophisticated as the technology improves at a record clip, fake political pictures have begun to flood the internet — with real political consequences.

An AI-generated image shared by tech billionaire Elon Musk, who supports Trump, depicted Harris in the uniform of a communist dictator. Meanwhile, Trump himself promoted fake AI images of himself receiving support from pop megastar Taylor Swift and her friends. Swift later broke her political silence and endorsed Harris earlier this month.

Writing for The Atlantic, Megan Garber slammed Trump's flippancy about the Diddy charges.

"These are criminal allegations of the direst sort: claims of abuse both physical and emotional. They are not funny. They are not fodder for glib social-media posts," she said.

While the allegations against Combs involve sex, she added, "they are not, strictly, about sex; they are about abuse."

"Assault is not sex. Rape is not sex. The meme that Trump shared ignores those distinctions. In sharing it, he revealed not only his shamelessness but also his ignorance. Women have long alleged that Trump doesn’t know the difference between sex and violence. Today, he proved them right," said Garber.