WASHINGTON– Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is spreading false claims that an image of thousands of people waiting at Detroit airport as Democrat Kamala Harris arrived for a campaign rally was fabricated using artificial intelligence.
Reporters, photographers and video journalists from the Associated Press and other news organizations who either traveled with Vice President Harris or were on the airport tarmac documented the size of the crowd when she arrived on Air Force Two last Wednesday. Harris’ campaign also denied that the photo in question was doctored and posted it on social media.
15,000 people attended the rally at Detroit airport, Harris’ campaign said. Harris and Walz spoke from a hangar where people were crammed together. The crowd also spilled onto the tarmac. The Wayne County Airport Authority, which oversees the airport, referred questions about the size of the crowd to Harris’ campaign.
Thousands of people came to their campaign events.
According to the Harris campaign, 12,000 people attended rallies in Philadelphia and Eau Claire, Wisconsin, last week, followed by 15,000 in Glendale, Arizona. In Las Vegas, more than 12,000 people were inside a university arena on Saturday when police barred entry because people waiting outside in the extreme 108-degree heat were getting sick. About 4,000 people were waiting in line when the doors were closed.
An Associated Press reporter covering Harris events in Wisconsin, Michigan, Arizona and Nevada witnessed the large crowds arriving there.
Trump spread his false claims in two consecutive posts on his social media site on Sunday.
“Did anyone notice that Kamala CHEATED at the airport? There was no one on the plane and she manipulated it with an ‘AI’ and showed a huge ‘crowd’ of so-called followers BUT THEY DIDN’T EXIST!” he wrote, adding a post from another person who had made similar allegations of photo manipulation.
A minute later, Trump posted: “See, we caught them with a fake ‘crowd.’ There was no one there!” He attached a photo of the crowd, which was partly in shade and partly in the sun.
Harris’ campaign confirmed on Monday that the photo in question was taken by a staffer and had not been 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 models trained to recognize generative AI patterns and found no evidence of manipulation. The models were developed by GetReal Labs, a company Farid co-founded.
Farid responded in an email on Monday that he had compared several versions of the photo and the only change he found was a simple change in brightness or contrast and perhaps sharpening. He said many other images and videos of last Wednesday’s event showed essentially the same scene.
Trump began spreading false theories about the Harris campaign photo after holding a news conference at his Florida estate on Thursday and being asked about the crowds at his Democratic rival’s rallies, Trump said no one draws crowds as big as he does.
“I have spoken to the largest crowds. Nobody has spoken to larger crowds than I have,” Trump claimed at the press conference, his first since Harris became the Democratic presidential nominee.
He further falsely compared the crowd at his speech at the White House on January 6, 2021, to the crowd at Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech at the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963.
But King drew far more people. According to the National Park Service, about 250,000 people attended the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where King delivered his speech. The Associated Press reported in 2021 that at least 10,000 people attended Trump’s address.
Some of Trump’s top advisers and supporters urged the former president to focus his criticism on Harris’ policies and talk more about the border and the economy.
“Stop questioning the size of your following,” was the advice from former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) during an appearance on Fox News on Monday.
The Harris team grilled Trump on a number of issues in an email Monday titled “9 days since Trump’s last swing state event.” The message included a bullet point that said, “He is very angry about the size of the crowds and claims they are all fake and AI generated. (Maybe he would also attract crowds if he were campaigning?)”
