Trump's use of AI images pushes new boundaries, further eroding public
trust, experts say
[January 28, 2026]
By KAITLYN HUAMANI
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The Trump administration has not shied away from
sharing AI-generated imagery online, embracing cartoonlike visuals and
memes and promoting them on official White House channels.
But an edited — and realistic — image of civil rights attorney Nekima
Levy Armstrong in tears after being arrested is raising new alarms about
how the administration is blurring the lines between what is real and
what is fake.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s account posted the original
image from Levy Armstrong's arrest before the official White House
account posted an altered image that showed her crying. The doctored
picture is part of a deluge of AI-edited imagery that has been shared
across the political spectrum since the fatal shootings of Renee Good
and Alex Pretti by U.S. Border Patrol officers in Minneapolis.
However, the White House’s use of artificial intelligence has troubled
misinformation experts who fear the spreading of AI-generated or edited
images erodes public perception of the truth and sows distrust.
In response to criticism of the edited image of Levy Armstrong, White
House officials doubled down on the post, with deputy communications
director Kaelan Dorr writing on X that the “memes will continue.” White
House Deputy Press Secretary Abigail Jackson also shared a post mocking
the criticism.
David Rand, a professor of information science at Cornell University,
says calling the altered image a meme “certainly seems like an attempt
to cast it as a joke or humorous post, like their prior cartoons. This
presumably aims to shield them from criticism for posting manipulated
media.” He said the purpose of sharing the altered arrest image seems
“much more ambiguous” than the cartoonish images the administration has
shared in the past.
Memes have always carried layered messages that are funny or informative
to people who understand them, but indecipherable to outsiders.
AI-enhanced or edited imagery is just the latest tool the White House
uses to engage the segment of Trump’s base that spends a lot of time
online, said Zach Henry, a Republican communications consultant who
founded Total Virality, an influencer marketing firm.
“People who are terminally online will see it and instantly recognize it
as a meme,” he said. “Your grandparents may see it and not understand
the meme, but because it looks real, it leads them to ask their kids or
grandkids about it.”
All the better if it prompts a fierce reaction, which helps it go viral,
said Henry, who generally praised the work of the White House’s social
media team.
The creation and dissemination of altered images, especially when they
are shared by credible sources, “crystallizes an idea of what’s
happening, instead of showing what is actually happening,” said Michael
A. Spikes, a professor at Northwestern University and news media
literacy researcher.
“The government should be a place where you can trust the information,
where you can say it’s accurate, because they have a responsibility to
do so," he said. "By sharing this kind of content, and creating this
kind of content … it is eroding the trust — even though I’m always kind
of skeptical of the term trust — but the trust we should have in our
federal government to give us accurate, verified information. It’s a
real loss, and it really worries me a lot.”
Spikes said he already sees the “institutional crises” around distrust
in news organizations and higher education, and feels this behavior from
official channels inflames those issues.
Ramesh Srinivasan, a professor at UCLA and the host of the Utopias
podcast, said many people are now questioning where they can turn to for
“trustable information.” “AI systems are only going to exacerbate,
amplify and accelerate these problems of an absence of trust, an absence
of even understanding what might be considered reality or truth or
evidence,” he said.
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Nekima Levy Armstrong holds up her fist after speaking at an
anti-ICE rally for Martin Luther King Jr., Monday, Jan. 19, 2026, in
St. Paul, Minn. (AP Photo/Angelina Katsanis, File)
Srinivasan said he feels the White House and other officials sharing
AI-generated content not only invites everyday people to continue to
post similar content but also grants permission to others who are in
positions of credibility and power, like policymakers, to share
unlabeled synthetic content. He added that given that social media
platforms tend to “algorithmically privilege” extreme and
conspiratorial content — which AI generation tools can create with
ease — “we’ve got a big, big set of challenges on our hands.”
An influx of AI-generated videos related to Immigration and Customs
Enforcement action, protests and interactions with citizens has
already been proliferating on social media. After Renee Good was
shot by an ICE officer while she was in her car, several
AI-generated videos began circulating of women driving away from ICE
officers who told them to stop. There are also many fabricated
videos circulating of immigration raids and of people confronting
ICE officers, often yelling at them or throwing food in their faces.
Jeremy Carrasco, a content creator who specializes in media literacy
and debunking viral AI videos, said the bulk of these videos are
likely coming from accounts that are “engagement farming," or
looking to capitalize on clicks by generating content with popular
keywords and search terms like ICE. But he also said the videos are
getting views from people who oppose ICE and DHS and could be
watching them as “fan fiction,” or engaging in “wishful thinking,”
hoping that they're seeing real pushback against the organizations
and their officers.
Still, Carrasco also believes that most viewers can't tell if what
they're watching is fake, and questions whether they would know
"what’s real or not when it actually matters, like when the stakes
are a lot higher."
Even when there are blatant signs of AI generation, like street
signs with gibberish on them or other obvious errors, only in the
“best-case scenario” would a viewer be savvy enough or be paying
enough attention to register the use of AI.
This issue is, of course, not limited to news surrounding
immigration enforcement and protests. Fabricated and misrepresented
images following the capture of deposed Venezuelan leader Nicolás
Maduro exploded online earlier this month. Experts, including
Carrasco, think the spread of AI-generated political content will
only become more commonplace.
Carrasco believes that the widespread implementation of a
watermarking system that embeds information about the origin of a
piece of media into its metadata layer could be a step toward a
solution. The Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity has
developed such a system, but Carrasco doesn’t think that will become
extensively adopted for at least another year.
“It’s going to be an issue forever now,” he said. I don’t think
people understand how bad this is.”
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Associated Press writers Jonathan J. Cooper in Phoenix and Barbara
Ortutay in San Francisco contributed to this report.
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