White House defends sharing AI image showing arrested woman crying

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/ce9yydgmzdvt

by petepete • 6 months ago

133 64 6 months ago

bbc.co.uk

fuzzfactor3• 6 months ago

For everyone involved or resposible about this kind of thing, this sheds no light whatsoever on their position when it comes to deepfakes.

haritha-j3• 6 months ago

It sheds plenty of light. They're pro-deepfakes. The government literally uses deepfakes to make themselves look more 'powerful', if that's the right word.

throwawayqqq11• 6 months ago

... to fabricate emotional messages. They would happily reach for any picture showing something that could resemble a crime and put a crying "3 years old rape victim" next to it. This is what their base is conditioned on. In this case, deepfakes were likely the best option.

IAmBroom2• 6 months ago

That is a completely illogical take: "This tells us nothing about how those who intentionally used deepfakes feel about intentionally using deepfakes".

fuzzfactor3• 6 months ago

You mean any authorities who might be expected to protect the public against deepfakes might not really be working 100% in favor of the public?

Say it isn't so . . .

insane_dreamer4• 6 months ago

it absolutely does. their position is "deepfakes are OK so long as we're the ones doing it"

cdrnsf• 6 months ago

It's propaganda, plain and simple.

"The government... the American government - they're sneaky, they're very deceitful, they're liars, they're cheats, they're rip-offs. I mean, the American government is one-- is one systematic government that... that nobody can trust. I don't trust them myself"

amelius• 6 months ago

Yes, spreading FUD, basically.

huhkerrf• 6 months ago

This is just so absolutely stupid. This group of people have somehow got it in their heads that their primary job is owning the libs, and not governing.

Independent of your views on immigration, or law and order, or anything. Juvenile shit like this does absolutely nothing to advance any policy goals.

Even worse, why should you average normie trust any image that comes out from the White House? If there's a serious national security issue, why are we going to trust a group of people who are willing to doctor a photo for such stupid ends?

watwut2• 6 months ago

This group of people have somehow got it in their heads that their primary job is owning the libs, and not governing.

Their voters wanted exactly that tho. Although they did not wanted harm for themselves, conservatives and republicans actively wanted this kind of "owning the libs" and insulting "the libs".

This part is literally what the vote was about.

luma• 6 months ago

Every Republican you know, including a substantial percentage of the users here, is directly responsible for what we have in front of us today.

This is precisely the thing they voted for.

techdmn2• 6 months ago

I wouldn't be so dismissive. With only two choices, you get a lot of variation on both sides. I'm sure some people were motivated by animosity, racism, misogyny. Others were likely motivated by things Trump is willing to say out loud: Our trade policies are hurting average Americans. Our oversea imperialism does not benefit average Americans. We need to "drain the swamp". Of course his policies actively make all those problems worse, and could generally be described as an unmitigated disaster, but the pitch was compelling to at least some set of his voters.

tokai• 6 months ago

Was it also owning the libs to throw away 80 years of US soft power I wonder.

greekrich92• 6 months ago

In that one of the animating ideas behind the Republican party for the last 80 years has been to undo everything that Roosevelt built, yes.

red-iron-pine• 6 months ago

nah that's Russian and Saudi money

krapp3• 6 months ago

Yes, because they view soft power as the product of progressive ideology and Democratic party corruption. They want the big stick and nothing more.

insane_dreamer4• 6 months ago

why should you average normie trust any image that comes out from the White House?

or trust that whatever is released by the DOJ on the Epstein files is genuine

UncleMeat3• 6 months ago

The policy goal is "fuck you, liberals." That's the whole of it. The goal is to hurt people.

It is a politics of meanness.

thrance• 6 months ago

Independent of your views on immigration, or law and order, or anything. Juvenile shit like this does absolutely nothing to advance any policy goals.

You should stop appealing to some kinds of higher principles that are provably inexistant among Trump supporters. This kind of juvenile shit is why they like him in the first place. Anyone still siding with them deserves only scorn and disgust.

haritha-j3• 6 months ago

The title is a bit misleading, at least, I interpreted it wrong. The white house took a photo of a woman who was arrested, but expressionless, and used AI to make it look like she was crying. Insanely disgusting behaviour.

jagged-chisel• 6 months ago

I’m genuinely curious about how this title was misleading. I have not heard anything about this issue until this link on HN. I did indeed assume the crying was added by AI at the behest of White House staff.

Please don’t misread: I am genuinely curious how I one may have read this another way and how that could have been helped with rewording.

Planktonne3• 6 months ago

Two things, I think:

1. "Defends" suggests some level of explanation and justification; the White House did not present any here.

2. "AI image showing arrested woman" could mean a fully-generated image of a woman, rather than editing an image of an existing person under law enforcement control to disguise the actual facts. The first one would be bizarre, the second one is much more problematic.

haritha-j3• 6 months ago

Oh in my head I just assumed they used AI to generate an image of a woman crying while being arrested from scratch. Given that the white house previously shared AI generated videos of Trump putting a flag on Greenland or dropping feces on protestors, I assumed it was a from-scratch generated image to show something 'aspirational', rather than using AI to edit an existing arrest image.

echelon_musk• 6 months ago

The White House said "The memes will continue". Dodging the direct question while at the same time admitting it is a doctored image as it qualifies as a 'meme'. Obviously it masquerades as truth and this is terrifying deception.

What should I expect from the same administration that also altered the (tiny fraction of) Epstein files before releasing them.

fuzzfactor3• 6 months ago

The memes will continue until the torture is more widely tolerated.

ck2• 6 months ago

It's the non-stop openly lying to judges in court that should be the worldwide newspaper headline

That's some post-constitutional anti-democracy bullsh*t right there that should have zero tolerance because that means everything else is likely a lie.

It's like a virus since he came down the golden escalator, first every single thing he said was a lie or wild exaggeration, and then he recruited exclusively only people around him to do the same.

There's good reason the highest power positions in the government are HIS PERSONAL LAWYERS with legal obligation first to him beyond anything else.

Planktonne3• 6 months ago

The article title is overly kind; the White House didn't defend the image, they dismissed it as an issue.

This reporting presents it as a debate with reasoning on both sides, rather than a brazen act with no defence supplied. It's not good journalism to legitimise a position that didn't even attempt to legitimise itself.

roxolotl2• 6 months ago

This has been the story the whole time. Coupled with the insistence the media is unfair they’ve managed to shift the window of what is acceptable. It’s been remarkably effective and most news sources seemingly have no counter.

piltdownman2• 6 months ago

It's not even about whats acceptable, it's about what they can frame as a narrative for their supporters in as incendiary a manner as possible. Remember that the FCC investigations into Comcast and NBCUniversal weren't predicated on political bias or uneven reporting, but rather that they '...may be promoting invidious forms of DEI in a manner that does not comply with FCC regulations.”

Matthew Gertz, a senior fellow at Media Matters, summarises its mechanisms and intent quite succinctly: “This is the path that Viktor Orbán took in Hungary, where you use the power of the state to ensure that the media is compliant, that outlets are either curbed and become much less willing to be critical, or they are sold to owners who will make that happen."

yunwal2• 6 months ago

most news sources seemingly have no counter

Counter to what? Most news sources are owned by people who support this administration’s positions, and are glad they don’t have to do this whole charade of pretending to care about the truth or normal people.

piltdownman2• 6 months ago

I mean Donald Trump on Tuesday posted an AI-generated image of himself holding an American flag next to a sign that read "Greenland". Previously he had posted fake videos of Obama being arrested. We're a long way past traditional notions of journalism in this post-satire reality - and the BBC has to adhere to 'rules for me, not for thee' moral outrage after its recent gaffe broadcasting an edited speech of Trumps.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/21/us/politics/trump-fake-vi...

Larrikin3• 6 months ago

Distract from the pedophile issue with memes while grifting billions from the US.

Trump did not have enough pay the money from his rape case. Now a year later through bribes and making Americans poorer with tariffs he personally has earned over a billion dollars. Greenland conquering gave him a couple extra weeks to break the law and only release the 1 percent of photos from the Epstein files that had Clinton in them.

blitzar• 6 months ago

Those who can do; those that can't meme and make fake images.

shrubble• 6 months ago

The cynical part of me thinks it’s because she wasn’t crying in real life.

2OEH8eoCRo0• 6 months ago

She didn't appear sufficiently "owned" and the police didn't appear sufficiently cruel.

Why don't more people feel insulted when lied to?

UncleMeat3• 6 months ago

I believe that it is under discussed just how much AI has become the aesthetic of modern fascism.

cosmicgadget• 6 months ago

When reality doesn't convey your message, change reality.

mexicocitinluez• 6 months ago

My lord, the absolute irony in a large subset of Americans believing the government was over-reaching only to find themselves supporting the government quite literally re-writing history.

MichaelNolan• 6 months ago

Direct link instead of live view - https://www.bbc.com/news/live/ce9yydgmzdvt?post=asset%3Aaec7...

racktash• 6 months ago

We're well past the point where (and it's ever growing) evidence of Trumpism's tyranny and cruelty will sway anyone, I think. As depressing as it is, a large swathe of people just do not and cannot care. I remain shocked that the March CECOT deportations (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_2025_American_deportatio...) is largely untalked about now. Yes, many months have passed, but the blatant human rights violations involved remain truly shocking to me.

jwx48• 6 months ago

There was, I believe, a hairdresser rounded up by ICE and sent to CECOT with images/video of his head getting shaved and audio of him crying for his mother. I think about him all the time, and wonder what happened to him because it's so horrific. He doesn't strike me as the kind of person who would survive a situation like that, and yet nothing on his status, or his family, has noticably trickled out as information in the last nine or 10 months. My short little comment here will do nothing to encompass the context of the situation, but to have this humiliating experience documented and highlighted only to have it disappear so quickly and easily it's downright depressing.

tim333• 6 months ago

I think it's this guy https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/28/cecot-el-sal...

Released and back with family in Venez.

moribvndvs• 6 months ago

a church service in Minnesota last Sunday, where a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement official is a pastor.

Wait, what?

rsynnott2• 6 months ago

I assume he really mostly likes the cruxifixction bit of the story.

NoGravitas• 6 months ago

American Christianity is a deeply twisted heresy that worships the Demiurge.

insane_dreamer4• 6 months ago

The KKK was deeply evangelical Christian.

rsynnott2• 6 months ago

There's something deeply _sick_ about this regime.

krapp3• 6 months ago

This regime is just a symptom, it didn't emerge from a vacuum, rather it's a manifestation of the culture that nourishes it. This sort of vindictive cruelty and mockery is what voters liked most about Trump, they found it refreshing. What's deeply sick is the society that voted this regime into power - twice - and still supports it.

And I'm including the "leftists" who decided a second Trump term was preferable to the "status quo" under Kamala Harris, or that it didn't matter because "both parties were the same." There's a special circle of Hell reserved for that lot.

insane_dreamer4• 6 months ago

Trump 1.0 I dismissed as an aberration, but Trump 2.0 has truly exposed the inhumanity of a significant segment of US society, that was always there beneath the surface since slavery and Jim Crow just waiting for "normalization" that would allow it to re-emerge. I was naive about the progress the US had made over the last century, and it has been a rude awakening. I no longer want to raise my kids here and am actively working towards emigrating.

tavavex• 6 months ago

Aaand it's flagged. Can someone explain to me how an article about one of the world's most influential governments posting digitally altered imagery as fact is off-topic in regards to tech and computer science?

krapp3• 6 months ago

"politics."

"we only want curious conversation here."

"if it would be covered on tv it's probably off topic."

You know the drill.

White House defends sharing AI image showing arrested woman crying

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