The right wing has falsely claimed that the Harris campaign used AI to fake photos of packed rallies. (Getty/Canva)
Conspiracy theorists, inspired by Donald Trump, have gone wild on social media, claiming that Kamala Harris’ campaign somehow used AI tools to disguise large numbers of its supporters during the election campaign.
Right-wing social media users, including presidential candidate Donald Trump, have argued that a video of Harris greeting a throng of supporters at Detroit Metro Airport is fake because it was captured on an airplane’s fuselage.
President Trump posted a false claim on his social media platform, TruthSocial, that Kamala Harris “cheated” by using AI tools to edit the crowd, and further claimed the crowd “didn’t exist.”
“She is a con artist,” he wrote. “The ‘crowd’ looked like 10,000 people when no one was waiting! The same thing happened with the fake ‘crowds’ at her speeches.”
“Democrats win elections by cheating. And they’re even worse at the ballot box.”
The false story quickly went viral and began circulating on social media platforms, including TikTok, where Trump supporters repeated the plane reflection claim, with one video on the app having more than 3 million views.
Fact-checking watchdog Snopes The company quickly refuted the claims in a post on Monday (August 12), writing that the photos were real and unedited.
A member of the Harris-Waltz campaign confirmed that the photo was taken by a staff member, but the photo’s metadata — basic information about a photo’s digital footprint — confirmed that the photo had not been altered.
The original photo was shared by various online users in early August, including political strategist Rachel Beitcofer, and eventually picked up on anti-Harris forums and subreddits, where she claimed it was “visibly Photoshopped.”
Not only did the metadata confirm that the image was taken at a campaign rally, but Snopes noted that the crowd lacked characteristics typical of AI-generated imagery, such as non-human or unrecognizable facial features.
Additionally, an AI detection tool determined the image was “96 percent human.”
Zooming in on the crowd, some attendees can be seen recording a plane in the distance on their phone screens — a detail that AI can’t create.
Naturally, this wasn’t the only photo taken during the event. Several clips and videos posted from the event, as well as an article from the BBC, prove that the rally was genuine.
The official X account for the Harris-Waltz campaign then took the opportunity to poke fun at the AI’s claims, sharing a video clip of comedian Stephen Colbert claiming that Trump was causing a “thermonuclear explosion” over the size of Kamala Harris’ crowd, as well as other related TV clips.
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