Former President Donald Trump shared a series of images on Truth Social Sunday night suggesting that superstar Taylor Swift and a group of her followers called “Swifties for Trump” had endorsed him in the 2024 presidential election.
Many of the images, including one of the singer-songwriter dressed as Uncle Sam with the caption, “Taylor Swift Wants You To Vote For Donald Trump,” appear to have been generated by artificial intelligence.
He wrote in one of the captions, “I accept!”
In 2020, Swift backed the campaign of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, and there is certainly no love lost between her and former President Trump, whom she has accused of “stoking the fires of white supremacy and racism.”
Swift, however, has yet to endorse any presidential candidate this election cycle.
The posts were met with outrage on social media, both by Trump’s critics and fans of the megastar singer-songwriter. Some legal analysts believe Swift has grounds to sue the Republican nominee over the AI-manipulated “false endorsement.”
“I hope this inspires every Taylor Swift fan to vote for Harris. And every music fan. And every person who cares about an artist’s image & prestige stole by a criminal politician. And everyone who supports women’s rights. Oh, and I hope Ms. Swift sues Trump back to the Stone Age,” attorney and former U.S. Army prosecutor Glenn Kirschner wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
One of the images in Trump’s post—of a woman in a white “Swifties for Trump” T-shirt—is not fake. One image showed Jenna Piwowarczyk wearing the homemade T-shirt to a Trump rally in Racine, Wisconsin, in June. Piwowarczyk went on to explain her decision to start the movement in a YouTube video.
“By focusing more on the AI photos than on the REAL person in the photos that Trump shared, I think the media are missing an opportunity to recognize that, of all the millions of Taylor Swift fans, of course there will be many who support Trump and conservative values and also love her music. We exist. We are real,” Piwowarczyk wrote in a statement shared by Wisconsin Right Now, a Wisconsin-focused news platform, on X.
There is also evidence of an online “Swifties for Trump” movement. In a TikTok video posted by user @trendyandspendy, a woman can be seen posing in a bright pink MAGA hat.
In an emailed statement to Newsweek Monday night, Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung wrote, “Swifties for Trump is a massive movement that grows bigger every single day. While [Democratic nominee] Kamala Harris is guilty as sin for all the hurt she has caused every American.”
Jessica Silbey, a professor at Boston University School of Law and an intellectual property and constitutional law expert, told Billboard Monday that Trump’s fake endorsement post likely violates Swift’s right of publicity, which controls how your name, image and likeness are used by others.
“Everyone enjoys a right of publicity,” Silbey told Billboard. “This kind of use—being made to say and seen as believing things you don’t—is at the core of the right.”
Sibley also told Billboard that Swift could look to sue Trump or his campaign for defamation over claims that the false presidential endorsement harmed her reputation.
Last month, a bi-partisan NO FAKES Act was introduced in the Senate that aims to protect individuals’ voices and likenesses from AI-generated replicas. The act would “hold individuals or companies liable for damages for producing, hosting, or sharing a digital replica of an individual performing in an audiovisual work, image, or sound recording that the individual never actually appeared in or otherwise approved—including digital replicas created by generative artificial intelligence (AI), according to a press release on Democratic Senator Chris Coons’ website.
In addition, 10 states, including Swift’s home state of Tennessee, have enacted legislation to regulate deepfakes, which could give her additional room to sue Trump or his campaign.
