Trump shares doctored images showing Taylor Swift support

WASHINGTON, United States — Donald Trump shared doctored images showing Taylor Swift and her fans supporting his presidential campaign, in an apparent effort to tap into the pop singer's mega star power in the US election.

Swift has not yet publicly thrown her weight behind any presidential candidate in the November 5 election, but she backed President Joe Biden in 2020 and has previously been critical of Trump.

On Sunday, Trump shared screenshots of posts with manipulated images –- including some that an expert said appeared to be AI-generated -– suggesting that the pop star and her fans, popularly known as Swifties, support his campaign.

In a post on his social media site Truth Social, which included an image of Swift clad in an Uncle Sam outfit and instructing her fans to vote for Trump, the former president wrote: "I accept!"

That image, in the style of a poster, was either "AI-generated or just classically manipulated," Hany Farid, a digital forensics expert at the University of California, Berkeley, told AFP.

The post also includes photos of women wearing shirts with the slogan "Swifties for Trump," some of which Farid said had the "tell-tale signs of being AI-generated."

What makes the mash-up "particularly devious" is its combination of real and fake imagery, with at least one photo of a woman wearing such a shirt looking legitimate, Farid said.

There was no immediate comment from Swift about the post by Trump, who separately shared on Truth Social a video of a supporter voicing the dubious claim that "Swifties were rallying for Trump."

"You're going to let this go uncorrected?" A.J. Delgado, a former advisor to the Trump campaign in 2016, wrote in a post on the platform X that was addressed to the singer's publicist.

Trump's post also drew online mockery and scorn from the singer's fans, some of whom called on her to take legal action against the former president.

Swift's massive popularity and sway over her fans could make her support valuable in the upcoming US presidential election.

Both Republicans and Democrats have long wanted her support, but the megastar has been largely reticent about her political leanings.

In a demonstration of her star