The Biden campaign is facing its first major cheapfake scandal this week. Doctored clips of Biden at the G7 Summit and a Hollywood fundraiser have spread across platforms like X, claiming to show Biden wandering off, mumbling unintelligibly, or, uh, even pooping his pants. It’s exactly the type of content the right-wing media apparatus drools over to play up Biden’s age, despite the clips being edited in a manner reminiscent of the drunk Nancy Pelosi video from last cycle.
And while we’re all starting to get stressed over simple editing and cropping techniques again, Big Tech is training political campaigns on their generative AI tools. Could a little direction help mitigate the issue? Maybe. Could it make it worse? Yeah, probably.
Let’s talk about it.
Politics has never been stranger—or more online. WIRED Politics Lab is your guide through the vortex of extremism, conspiracies, and disinformation.
- 🗞️ Read previous newsletters here.
- 🎧 Listen to the WIRED Politics Lab podcast.
- 💬 Join the conversation below this article.