The Atlantic

The Trump AI Deepfakes Had an Unintended Side Effect

The most crucial element of the fake Trump-arrest images is not that they are misleading. It is that they are cinematic.
Source: Illustration by The Atlantic. Source: Elliot Higgins / Midjourney v5

The former president is fighting with the police. He’s yelling. He’s running. He’s resisting. Finally, he falls, that familiar sweep of hair the only thing rigid against the swirl of bodies that surround him.

When I first saw , I did a double take: The event they seem to depict—the arrest of Donald Trump—has been a matter of feverish anticipation this week, as a grand jury decides whether to indict the former president for hush-money payments allegedly made on his behalf to the adult-film star Stormy Daniels. (Trump, that canny calibrator of public expectation, himself to the

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