'You're a disgrace': Donald Trump's late father resurrected by AI to blast him ahead of election

A portrait of former US president Donald Trump’s father Fred Trump seen in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, in 2017.

The latest figure to come out against former US president Donald Trump and his candidacy in the 2024 election may come as a surprise: his late father.

The Lincoln Project, a political action committee founded by moderate Conservatives and former Republicans, has produced and posted a video generated by artificial intelligence (AI) featuring Fred Trump with some less-than encouraging words for his son.

“Donny, I always knew you’d blow it,” Fred says deadpan to the camera. “You were always a fool – a joke, low rent”.

Trump Sr, a real estate developer and businessman like his son, died in 1999.

The video goes on to insult the former Republican president’s business deals as “all garbage,” accuses him of weak performance in his personal life, and tells him that his “children hate him, especially the girl [Ivanka Trump]”.

The Lincoln Project describes themselves as a “pro-democracy organisation” that is working to avoid Trump’s return to the White House in the 2024 election.

The video includes a tag at the end to say that it was “generated in whole or substantially by artificial intelligence” and that it includes “speech or conduct that did not occur”.

The ad is the latest in a wave of election misdirection ahead of the 2024 elections later this year.

Earlier in the race for the Republican nomination, candidate and Florida governor Ron DeSantis released an AI-generated video where Trump hugged Anthony Fauci, the White House’s former medical advisor during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The video did not include a disclaimer that it was fake.

AI use in election misinformation

In January, voters in New Hampshire received robocalls from a voice that sounded like current president Joe Biden telling them to not vote in the primaries. The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) later announced a ban on AI-generated voices in robocalls.

“We’re putting the fraudsters behind these robocalls on notice,” said FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel at the time.

“State Attorneys General will now have new tools to crack down on these scams and ensure the public is protected from fraud and misinformation”.

Midjourney, a popular AI image platform, is also considering a ban on political images ahead of the 2024 election.

The platform’s already been used to create fake images of Trump being handcuffed by federal agents. Other images showed President Biden firing a machine gun and Trump meeting Pope Francis in the White House.

So far, Trump is the leading candidate in the Republican primaries over Nikki Haley, the former US ambassador to the UN and his only remaining competition for the party’s nomination.

Experts in the US are saying that the 2024 election will likely be a rematch between Trump and Biden, who does not have any competition for the Democratic nomination.