New Controversy After Trump Uses AI to Depict Himself as JB Pritzker
Pope unfazed
Fresh controversy erupted Sunday night after US president Donald Trump clearly used generative AI to create an image depicting himself as Illinois governor JB Pritzker for a post on Truth Social.
The image shows Trump surrounded by pleading constituents in front of a patriotic background laying glowing hands on a bedridden man.
“The president went heavy on the symbolism, as usual,” said Chicago art critic Teddy Peters. “Governor Pritzker can’t directly heal the sick, of course. This may be a reference to important bills he’s signed imposing restrictions on pharmacy benefit managers and prohibiting prior authorization for important health services under state-regulated health plans.”
Peters believed the make-up of the crowd was a deliberate part of the prompt as well.
“The presence of soldiers and possibly veterans in the crowd, presumably with needs of their own, is particularly meaningful,” he continues. “This likely alludes to Pritzker’s command that state agencies protect veteran access to healthcare after the Trump administration politicized the language of those protections last year.”
Likewise, the presence of a nurse may refer to the coming five-year anniversary of the bipartisan Nurse Staffing Improvement Act, protecting and requiring cooperation between nursing staff and hospital administrators, that Governor Pritzker signed into law in 2021.
“This is the kind of leadership Mr. Trump has always aspired to,” Peters speculates. “But AI has allowed him to briefly live that fantasy without all of the messy entanglements of making it happen in real life or, indeed, simply not hampering the efforts of true leaders.”
Regarding the less-detailed figures glowing in the sky, Peters was a bit less certain.
“These are probably just typical artifacts of AI slop, but my guess is that they are a reminder to live virtuously so that JB Pritzker will accept you into the afterlife.”
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