DeSantis campaign uses AI fakes of Trump hugging Fauci

What happens when political attack ads stop taking real quotes out of context and start inventing entirely fake realities from scratch?

Earlier this week, the “DeSantis War Room” Twitter account—an official rapid-response arm backing Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ 2024 presidential bid—rolled out a brutal attack ad against Donald Trump. The core message was simple: paint Trump as a loyal ally of Anthony Fauci, a figure deeply unpopular among the MAGA base over COVID-19 lockdowns and vaccine mandates.

The video featured real footage combined with a six-image collage of Trump and Fauci. Three of those photos showed Trump hugging and even kissing Fauci on the cheek.

The catch? Those three images never actually happened.

The telltale signs of synthetic smear

AFP was first to spot the fakes, and forensic imaging experts quickly confirmed what casual viewers might have missed during a rapid scroll.

Hany Farid, a professor and image forensics expert at the University of California, noted that the three images yielded zero matches on reverse search engines and carried obvious synthetic artifacts. Digital media forensics expert Siwei Lyu came to the exact same conclusion.

Zoom in, and the tells are textbook current-gen generative AI: Trump’s and Fauci’s skin and hair look unnervingly glossy and smoothed out, their facial contours blend unnaturally into one another, and the iconic White House briefing room sign in the background is warped with illegible gibberish text instead of crisp lettering.

When pressed by The Verge on whether the campaign had used AI, Matt Wolking, a spokesperson for the pro-DeSantis Never Back Down PAC, deflected by claiming that no one pushes more deepfakes than Trump himself, while rapid response director Christina Pushaw mocked the inquiry on Twitter.

Blurring satire into digital deception

Generative AI has quickly wormed its way into the 2024 campaign cycle, but the tactics are mutating fast.

Just earlier this year, Trump circulated an AI audio parody featuring deepfaked voices of Elon Musk, Adolf Hitler, and the Devil mocking DeSantis’ glitchy campaign launch. Weeks before that, the Republican National Committee debuted an entirely AI-generated dystopian ad following Joe Biden’s reelection announcement.

Yet this DeSantis spot crossed a distinct line. Instead of theatrical parody or stylized dystopia, it seamlessly spliced three real news photographs with three completely fabricated scenes of physical intimacy.

Why it matters

We think this ad marks a troubling milestone in the weaponization of generative media.

Technically, churning out hyper-targeted photorealistic stills now costs pennies and requires zero technical skill. But politically, packaging fake photos inside a collage of real ones is ruthlessly effective. Most voters watching a fast-paced clip on their phones will never pause to scrutinize background typography or hair texture; they will simply absorb the emotional punch.

Even worse is what forensic researchers call the "liar’s dividend." As synthetic imagery floods political discourse, campaigns will not only manufacture compromising pictures of their rivals, but they will also gain an easy escape hatch to dismiss genuinely damaging real evidence as "just another AI fake."

Right now, platforms and regulators have no coherent framework to police this kind of stealth fabrication. As the campaign heats up, we believe voters will increasingly find themselves navigating an information battlefield where nothing can be taken at face value.