White House Promotes 'Trump TV' With AI-Altered Photo

The White House has promoted President Donald Trump's new streaming channel, "Trump TV", with a photograph modified using artificial intelligence. The image shows a packed aeroplane cabin in which passengers seem to be watching the channel on their seat-back screens. The post did not say the picture had been altered.

It appeared on the White House accounts on X, Facebook and Instagram. The caption read, "It's what everybody is watching," advertised another "HUGE week" of administration events and pointed viewers to Trump TV.

How the alteration was detected

An analysis using OpenAI's image-verification technology found a SynthID watermark, indicating the image was generated or modified with an AI tool. A reverse-image search led to the original, which was posted online in February 2023.

The original shows passengers watching Super Bowl LVII during a flight. One appears to be watching the 2005 romantic comedy "Hitch", starring Will Smith, instead of the game, and the original poster joked about it. The White House version keeps the scene but changes what is on the screens, giving the impression that the whole cabin is tuned to Trump TV. The photo was taken from a personal social media post.

Background

Trump TV launched in September as a 24-hour YouTube stream featuring footage of Trump and other White House and administration events. The launch came during the administration's dispute with several major news organisations, after Trump barred CNN, Politico and MS Now from the White House.

The image also follows recent remarks by Trump on artificial intelligence. He has dismissed concerns about AI as a "hoax" and wrote on Truth Social that the "only control or 'guardrails' that AI needs is a strong and smart president."