Donald Trump blames AI for video showing items thrown from White House. Is it the new 'fake news'?

Artificial intelligence, apparently, is the new “fake news."

Blaming AI is an increasingly popular strategy for politicians seeking to dodge responsibility for something embarrassing — among others. AI isn't a person, after all. It can't leak or file suit. It does make mistakes, a credibility problem that makes it hard to determine fact from fiction in the age of mis- and disinformation.

And when truth is hard to discern, the untruthful benefit, analysts say. The phenomenon is widely known as “the liar's dividend”.

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump endorsed the practice. Asked about viral footage showing someone tossing something out an upper-story White House window, the president replied: “No, that's probably AI” — after his press team had indicated to reporters that the video was real.

But Trump, known for insisting the truth is what he says it is, declared himself all in on the AI-blaming phenomenon.

“If something happens that’s really bad," he told reporters, “maybe I’ll have to just blame AI”.

He's not alone.

AI is getting blamed — sometimes fairly, sometimes not

On the same day in Caracas, Venezuelan Communications Minister Freddy Ñáñez questioned the veracity of a Trump administration video it said showed a US strike on a vessel in the Caribbean that targeted Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua gang and killed 11.

A video of the strike posted to Truth Social shows a long, multi-engine speedboat at sea when a bright flash of light bursts over it. The boat is then briefly seen covered in flames.

“Based on the video provided, it is very likely that it was created using Artificial Intelligence,” Ñáñez said on his Telegram account, describing “almost cartoonish animation”.

Blaming AI can at times be a compliment. (“He’s like an AI-generated player,” tennis player Alexander Bublik said of his US Open opponent Jannik Sinner's talent on ESPN ). But when used by the powerful, the practice, experts say, can be dangerous.

Digital forensics expert Hany Farid warned for years about the growing capabilities of AI “deepfake” images, voices and video to aid in fraud or political disinformation campaigns, but there was always a deeper problem.

“I’ve always contended that the larger issue is that when you enter this world where anything can be fake, then nothing has to be real,” said Farid, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. “You get to deny any reality because all you have to say is, ‘It’s a deepfake.”.

That wasn't so a decade or two ago, he noted. Trump issued a rare apology ("if anyone was offended") in 2016 for his comments about touching women without their consent on the notorious “Access Hollywood" tape. His opponent, Democrat Hillary Clinton, said she was wrong to call some of his supporters “a basket of deplorables”.

Toby Walsh, chief scientist and professor of AI at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, said blaming AI leads to problems not just in the digital world but in the real world as well.

“It leads to a dark future where we no longer hold politicians (or anyone else) accountable,” Walsh said in an email. “It used to be that if you were caught on tape saying something, you had to own it. This is no longer the case".

Contemplating the ‘liar’s dividend'

Danielle K. Citron of the Boston University School of Law and Robert Chesney of the University of Texas foresaw the issue in research published in 2019. In it, they describe what they call “the liar's dividend”.

“If the public loses faith in what they hear and see and truth becomes a matter of opinion, then power flows to those whose opinions are most prominent—empowering authorities along the way," they wrote in the California Law Review.

“A sceptical public will be primed to doubt the authenticity of real audio and video evidence”.

Polling suggests many Americans are wary of AI. About half of US adults said the increased use of AI in daily life made them feel “more concerned than excited,” according to a Pew Research Center poll from August 2024. Pew’s polling indicates that people have become more concerned about the increased use of AI in recent years.

They have reason, and Trump has played a sizable role in muddying trust and truth.

Trump's history of misinformation and even lies to suit his narrative predates AI. He's famous for the use of “fake news,” a buzz term now widely known to denote scepticism about media reports. Leslie Stahl of CBS' “60 Minutes” has said that Trump told her off camera in 2016 that he tries to “discredit” journalists so that when they report negative stories, they won't be believed.

Trump's claim on Tuesday that AI was behind the White House window video wasn't his first attempt to blame AI. In 2023, he insisted that the anti-Trump Lincoln Project used AI in a video to make him “look bad”.

In the spot titled ” Feeble,” a female narrator taunts Trump. “Hey Donald ... you’re weak. You seem unsteady. You need help getting around.” She questions his ”manhood," accompanied by an image of two blue pills. The video continues with footage of Trump stumbling over words.

“The perverts and losers at the failed and once-disbanded Lincoln Project, and others, are using AI (Artificial Intelligence) in their Fake television commercials in order to make me look as bad and pathetic as Crooked Joe Biden,” Trump posted on Truth Social.

The Lincoln Project told The Associated Press at the time that AI was not used in the spot.