Donald Trump Appears to Shut Down AI Interview Theories

Donald Trump has appeared to stand by an interview with Real America's Voice on Thursday which raised speculation that the former president had used an artificial intelligence stand-in.

During the 17-minute phone-in with the right-wing network, the former president's typically distinctive and recognizable voice sounded altered, with a slightly different cadence and intonation than usual. The content of his remarks did closely resemble comments he has made elsewhere.

Following questions over the authenticity of the interview, Trump took to his Truth social media platform shortly after midnight on Thursday to share a clip from the interview, but did not explicitly address the claims that the interview had been faked.

"Crooked Joe Biden is the most incompetent President in history, and he's the most corrupt President in history," the Republican presidential primary candidate wrote alongside the clip, echoing previous criticism he has made of the current president.

Daily Beast reporter Zachary Petrizzo said that Trump's purported voice during the call sounded "pretty strange," but noted that one of the hosts who had conducted the interview, John Solomon, had insisted that the interviewee he had spoken to was "definitely Donald Trump."

Social media users appeared split over whether the interview was the work of AI trickery or had sounded odd due to technical conditions; the call appeared to break up in places and some speculated that it had been run through software to improve the quality of the call, inadvertently distorting the sound of Trump's voice.

Newsweek approached the Trump campaign via email for comment on Friday.

Artificial intelligence software designed for manipulating audio, video and text has improved dramatically in recent years, leading to a rise in its use for all manner of tasks. AI-generated images are appearing increasingly uncanny when compared to the real thing.

Attitudes towards AI are a mix of excitement about the technological advancements it is already bringing and concerns about the ethical questions it poses.

Experts have cautioned that generative AI—which is used to mimic human content—has the potential to replace human workers and repurpose intellectual property, but has also begun appearing as at times convincing sources of disinformation.

In February, a deep-faked video purporting to show Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren saying that "allowing Republicans to vote could threaten the integrity of the election" went viral on Twitter, now called X.

Update 09/01/23 10:48 a.m. ET: This article was updated to remove references to comments by Real America's Voice owner Robert Sigg to the Daily Beast, following a retraction of the remarks by the publication.