When thinking about the use of propaganda, you tend to associate it with a corrupted government that main goal is to misinform and mislead the public. For example, what the Nazi Party did with their citizens in the late 1920’s to mid 1940’s and the Russian Soviet Union in the 1920’s to 1990’s.

Well, propaganda has only gotten smarter with society and with technology. With the invention and continued innovation of Artificial Intelligence, AI has pushed propaganda’s capabilities far beyond what was ever possible when the Nazi’s ran their propaganda machine. AI has made it so people can no longer trust what they see anywhere. This technology is so advanced that when political parties use it to misinform and mislead the public, the consumers of this artificial media aren’t even aware that is what they are consuming. 

Artificial Intelligence has seemingly integrated into every aspect of people’s lives. It is built into their search engines, with things like the AI overview in Google, and interviews in their entertainment through social media with the most popular entertainment apps like Instagram and TikTok having special tabs dedicated to AI technology for users to indulge in. This kind of access leads to this technology becoming normalized, so it doesn’t appear as unusual when it appears in other areas in our life. Many other corporations like Amazon, Klarna, and Walmart, among others, have implemented Artificial Intelligence into their employees’ day to day lives. This kind of large scale implementation and adoption of AI into people’s lives, and the normalization of it, leads to people not reacting to seeing AI technology being used in the first place. So when political parties post AI images in social media or in the news, it is not completely out of the norm to the mass population because people have become desensitized to it.

The next step in desensitizing it to take away its shock value. So how does this administration do that? By posting mass amounts of images, videos, and statements on platforms like X (formerly Twitter), and Truth Social, The President’s social media app. First it started as posting AI generated photos of Trump as the Jedi, then he stood next to a lion, or sitting next to a pool. People acknowledged that his use of AI was irritating, but it does not outrage the public because it is seemingly harmless, silly, nonsensical. Overall not something that should be paid attention to when considering the other actions in his administration. 

However, what starts as normal, non important images that Donald Trump posts on his social media pages, can and has started to spiral into propaganda and purposefully through misinformation campaigns. 

It once again starts in a spot where it is not yet outrageous. However as the campaign continues, the influence we have brushed off as stupid and nonsensical starts to impact the consumers. The images and media being shared starts to become a part of the online environment, and then a part of our physical environment as people start to become influenced by the newly created surroundings. They become more and more susceptible to the propaganda as it spreads. 

The media on the left portrays Trump as a buffoon, clipping him, messing up when speaking, and mocking his outrageous declarations, however this man is not the buffoon. Donald Trump convinced an entire political party to worship him as a god. To commit crimes and insurrections in his name. They wear his apparel, they follow his command, they believe in what he preaches. This kind of influence could not have been accomplished without effective propaganda. He promised economic prosperity, isolationism, and based his campaign strategy on appealing to the people who hold right leaning values. That was an intelligent, strategically thought out way to seize power. And the media on the left portraying a dumbed down version of him, however comedic it may be, adds to the environment that leads the consumers to brush his minor actions off as just another cause of his ranting and raving.

As he counts his propaganda campaign, it spreads a harmful message with influential AI technology, and the people who oppose the message brush it off as simply more AI sloop the President is consistent with posting and promoting. So the AI photos promoting ICE’s actions in a post on January 15th 2026, criminalizing and villainizing immigrants and brown Americans on a post made March 27th 2025, and asserting himself as king and dictator on the official White House X account on February 19th 2025. These harmful artificial media gets confused with sloop and is not taken as seriously as it should. While this propaganda does not work at all, the people it works on are influenced into a fascist way of thinking and they will share that and in turn influencing others and strengthening the misinformation. The AI edited photo of advocated, and civil rights lawyer in Minnesota Nekima Levy Armstrong shows how real and imminent the continued threat of an AI propaganda campaign. The administration used AI technology to edit her face, exaggerating it to show her in hysterics, crying after getting detained by an ICE agent at a protest. The original, real photo shows her straight faced, calm and collected. It furthers the narrative the President is so adamant to shove into American’s faces. That the protesters of ICE are paid agitators who are unreasonable and unjustified in opposing his administration’s blatant disregard for the law and constitution. The photo was so well edited that people could not tell the difference when it was released to the public.

This use of AI Technology to spread lies about a group opposing the United States government. It convinces his supporters of what he has been saying all along. That the people who are protesting ICE’s criminal and unconstitutional actions are “left wing lunatics” and “paid agitators”. It is manufactured evidence to turn people away from free speech, away from exercising their American rights to oppose an overreaching government. 

When photography was invented and made largely accessible, oppressed groups like African Americans used these pictures to counter stereotypes used in propaganda to spread misinformation and hatred toward African Americans. In response to political cartoons drawn by white supremacists used to depict African Americans as less than human and non-civilized, African Americans took pictures to show that they are not inhuman or uncivilized, but dignified intellects. These pictures were so powerful and influential to fighting racism in America because their oppressors could not manipulate them to depict a different reality.

However as technology has advanced, with Photoshops and now AI, photos, what should be the most reliable depiction of reality, lose all trust and credibility. These oppressors are now able to manipulate photos and share them into the public as a captured moment of reality. With AI images and videos, or deepfakes, this administration has been able to manipulate the media of  their political opponents and civilians who speak against them, framing them in a bad light and swaying public opinion. 

This type of sketchy use of propaganda has caused people all over the internet to question every image they see, asking constantly “Is this picture AI?”. It is a result of mass media manipulation that creates skepticism of all photography, whether it be influenced by AI or not. For example, with ICE protests in Minnesota escalating, people question what videos and pictures from protests are real and which ones have been created either by the Trump Administration or by their supporters. This overuse of AI in propaganda does not need to convince the consumer that an AI image is real, but it is created to make the consumer question everything they see because of the mass amount of AI polluting social media and in turn politics. This leads to public distrust of not only social media and images in general, but also mis trust of the Administration and their purposefully misleading actions. It creates exhaustion, people get tired of questioning every image they are presented on the news. The environment  becomes one that is designed to mislead and exhaust the consumers of media. 

We all want to think we are the exception. We are too smart to fall for such silly, blatant propaganda. But you are not the exception. We are all susceptible to propaganda. It is designed to trick the masses into developing a way of thinking shaped by our environment, the environment that is currently being dictated by Donald Trump and his administration.