'Trump Gaza' AI video creators say they don't want to be the president's 'propaganda machine'

The creators of a controversial AI-generated video shared by President Donald Trump on social media say they never meant to become a “propaganda machine,” and that their video, which depicts an outlandish vision of Gaza featuring bearded dancers in bikinis and a giant golden Trump statue, was created as satire.

The creators of a controversial AI-generated video shared by President Donald Trump on social media say they never meant to become a “propaganda machine,” and that their video, which depicts an outlandish vision of Gaza featuring bearded dancers in bikinis and a giant golden Trump statue, was created as satire. 

The video’s creators, Solo Avital and Ariel Vromen, are two of the co-founders of Los Angeles-based EyeMix Visuals, which partly uses artificial intelligence to create commercials and promotional media. 

Speaking for the first time about the video, the pair told NBC News that it came about as a sort of pilot project as they experimented with an AI software called Arcana.

They’re not sure how their video ended up in Trump’s hands — but Vromen said he shared an early version with Mel Gibson, who Trump named as a special ambassador to Hollywood in January and who collaborated with EyeMix and Arcana on a previous project. While Gibson told them that he shared some of the creators’ other work with people close to Trump, the creators said he denied sharing the Gaza video with the president. A request for an interview with Gibson was declined by a representative.

As part of testing the AI software, Avital and Vromen tried to create a video with an eight-hour turnaround. But they hadn’t decided their topic until Trump announced a bizarre idea for the future of Gaza. 

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/trump-gaza-ai-video-propaganda-machine-rcna194097

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