AI-generated photos of president Joe Biden wearing military gear in the Situation Room have surfaced on the internet after a drone attack on US soldiers and amid tensions in the Middle East. The deepfakes went viral on X, showing Biden sitting at a desk with advisors, wearing a camouflage uniform. The photos were presumably made to suggest that the US was on a war footing.
Last week, the drone strike in northeast Jordan resulted in the deaths of three US service members. Biden condemned the attack as “despicable and wholly unjust,” and said, “We shall respond.”
Echoing Biden’s warning, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said, “The President and I will not tolerate attacks on American forces, and we will take all necessary actions to defend the United States, our troops and our interests.”
In an earlier release from the White House, Biden said, “While we are still gathering the facts of this attack, we know it was carried out by radical Iran-backed militant groups operating in Syria and Iran.”
{{/usCountry}}In an earlier release from the White House, Biden said, “While we are still gathering the facts of this attack, we know it was carried out by radical Iran-backed militant groups operating in Syria and Iran.”
{{/usCountry}}“The three American service members we lost were patriots in the highest sense,” he said. “ We will carry on their commitment to fight terrorism. And have no doubt — we will hold all those responsible to account at a time and in a manner [of] our choosing,” he added.
Biden’s AI images surfaced days aftersexually explicit AI-generated images of Taylor Swift were circulated online. In the aftermath of Swift’s images going viral, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has said that tech companies need to “move fast” to ensure there is no misuse of artificial intelligence.
“We have to act. And quite frankly all of us in the tech platform, irrespective of what your standing on any particular issue is. I think we all benefit when the online world is a safe world,” Nadella told NBC Nightly News.
“And so I don’t think anyone would want an online world that is completely not safe for, both for content creators and content consumers,” Nadella added. “So therefore I think it behooves us to move fast on this.”