President Donald Trump sowed a fair bit of confusion after posting not one but two AI-generated videos of a supposed US strike on Iran’s Kharg Island.
Trump, as it turned out, was simply hallucinating a fantasy, forcing a US official to clarify Monday that the depicted “attacks” on the island, Iran’s main hub of oil exports, hadn’t actually occurred, The Independent reported.
Trump made no effort to clarify that the videos were AI-generated when he posted them on Truth Social. In his first post, made on Sunday night, he only wrote in the caption: “Kharg Island being blown to smithereens!!!”
Both of the videos are made to look like they were taken from inside a helicopter as the island is engulfed in explosions and flames. He posted the follow-up video just a minute after the first, which is probably a sign of just how much of a kick Trump gets out of living out his fantasies in AI slop; he couldn’t settle for posting just one.
Asked by reporters to explain Trump’s slop parade on Monday, his vice president JD Vance could offer little of convincing substance.
“Well, you know, the president likes to switch it up on social media a little bit,” Vance said, adding that Trump was “sending a message to the Iranians.”
The timing of the AI videos couldn’t have been more deceptive. That Sunday night, the US launched a series of strikes on Iran’s Larak Island, ending a month-long lull in direct attacks. Iran retaliated by launching missiles at two US air bases in Jordan.
The following morning, Trump made another post calling Iran a “Failed Nation.”
“IT IS DEAD!” he declared. “They have no Navy, they have no Air Force, they have no currency.”
“The only thing they have,” he added, “is FAKE NEWS from the USA.”
We don’t need to explain the irony of Trump blasting his enemies for “FAKE NEWS” after posting an AI-generated video of an attack that didn’t happen. It is worth digging into, though, how Trump is retreating more and more into an AI-slop dominated fantasy of his own making, having spent the past few years posting AI images mocking his foes and others glorifying himself to a literally religious degree.
This is now coming to bear on his coping with the Iran war, which has been a disaster, killing thousands of innocent civilians and upending the world economy while extracting no tangible concessions to US interests. It was only supposed to last a few weeks but is now dragging its way to lasting over half a year. Trump has been unable to defend US allies in the region against Iran’s retaliatory missile and drone strikes and has failed to assert control over the Strait of Hormuz — despite Iran having “no Navy” — making the US’s preeminent military dominance look more like a paper tiger.
Why confront any of that, though, when you can simply crank out AI imagery that make it look like the war is going well? Bald-faced lying is an essential part of the administration’s playbook, after all; just a few days ago, the White House declared, for the umpteenth time, that the US controlled the Strait of Hormuz.
Trump isn’t the only one amused by the AI slop. On Monday, Hamid Bovard, the head of National Iranian Oil Company, called the president’s post “laughable,” per The Independent, adding that conditions on Kharg island were “calm and appropriate.”
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