Images of former US president Donald Trump being arrested by New York City law enforcement have been circulating on social media.
The Twitter posts, however, are fabricated through a platform called Midjourney, an artificial intelligence (AI) text-to-image generator.
Eliot Higgins, founder and creative director of investigative collective Bellingcat, the individual responsible for producing many of these images, has acknowledged that they were initially shared as a parody.
The images depict supposed New York Police Department officers restraining Trump as he appears to resist, with one image even showing him running away from them. However, upon closer examination of the images, the text on the police officers’ uniforms appears garbled, and their faces and hands are distorted. Additionally, one of the images shows Trump wearing a police belt.
After making a false claim that he would be arrested on Tuesday, Trump’s supporters reportedly donated $1.5 million to his campaign within three days.
According to Fox News, Trump’s 2024 campaign confirmed the amount and stated that it was raised through grassroots donations.
The Washington Post also reported the same amount raised during that time period, citing an anonymous source.
