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Trace the Information: Are millions protesting the arrest of Donald Trump in Manhattan?

SKILL: Trace the Information

DIFFICULTY: Simple

SUBJECT(S): Politics/Current Events, AI

Posted: March 22, 2023

Students will search the history of what a Twitter user claims is Donald Trump’s mugshot and an aerial photograph of millions protesting his arrest in Manhattan to learn that they are AI generated images.

Related Lesson

Verification Skills Lesson 4: Trace the Information (sign-in required)

Link to Example

Millions protesting Donald Trump’s arrest (archived post)
Photo of Donald Trump with text reading AI Generated over his face.

Background

On March 18th, 2023 reports spread that former U.S. President Donald Trump was likely to be indicted and arrested on charges related to hush money payments. As of the writing of this post no arrest has occurred.

AI art is art generated using artificial intelligence. The AI is trained on a data-set of thousands of images and uses it to produce new images. The person using the AI art generator can use text to describe what image they want the AI to produce.



About the Example

Teacher note: If you cannot access the archived post, click here for a screenshot of the post that you can share with your students, and here and here for the images contained in the post.

A post (archived version as post has since been deleted) includes an image of Donald Trump that appears to be a mugshot as well as an aerial view of a city with a building on fire. The accompanying post implies that Trump has been arrested and millions are protesting in Manhattan as a result.

A reverse-image search brings us to a Snopes fact-check rating the claim that these images depict the arrest of Trump as false. The article goes on to explain that they were created using  artificial intelligence (AI).



Activities 

  1. Show students the post and have them summarize the claim and describe the two images. Fill in any gaps in the knowledge about Donald Trump and his legal troubles.
  2. Have student reverse search either of the images using the following steps:
    • Right click on the image and select “Search Google for this image.”
    • Select “Find image source.”
  3. Have students click into the Snopes article at the top of the results. Guiding questions: 
    • Why might someone create and post these images as authentic? Why might someone share these images?
    • What steps can we take to stop the spread of AI generated mis- and disinformation?


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