Trump supporters are targeting black voters using AI-generated fake images to encourage African Americans to vote Republican

Supporters of Donald Trump created AI images showing the ex-president being embraced by black people, a demographic Republicans continue to struggle to court. 

A shocking new report from the BBC details sees at one prominent Trump supporter, Florida-based radio host Mark Kaye, admit to creating the fake image. 

'I'm not a photojournalist. I'm not out there taking pictures of what's really happening. I'm a storyteller,' Kaye told the BBC. 

The network shared two of the AI created images, one showed Trump smiling and with his arms around a group of black women. That picture was created by Mark Kaye and his team, the BBC reports. 

Another, showed Trump in front of a house with a group young black men. The photo was spread on social media. The story attached to the image claims that Trump was passing by a home in his motorcade and asked to get out to meet the men. The BBC reports that the image is fake. 

'At first it looks real, but on closer inspection everyone's skin is a little too shiny and there are missing fingers on people's hands - some tell-tale signs of AI-created images,' one section of the BBC report reads. 

'I'm not claiming it is accurate. I'm not saying, "Hey, look, Donald Trump was at this party with all of these African American voters. Look how much they love him,"' Kaye continued. 

'If anybody's voting one way or another because of one photo they see on a Facebook page, that's a problem with that person, not with the post itself.'

The person who created the image of Trump with the young black men, identified only as Shaggy from Michigan, apparently blocked a BBC reporter when asked about the images. 

'[My posts] have attracted thousands of wonderful kind-hearted Christian followers,' Shaggy did say before blocking the reporter. The post has 1.3 million views. 

On Monday, the Trump supporting super PAC MAGA Inc., will launch an ad campaign targeting black voters in Georgia, Michigan and Pennsylvania. 

This isn't Trump's first tussle with AI. Last month, he accused nefarious operators of using AI for make him appear overweight while he was playing golf. 

'The Fake News used Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) to create the picture. These are despicable people, but everyone knows that,' Trump railed.

'The other pictures are me hitting Golf balls today to show the difference. Sadly, in our Country, Fake News is all you get!'

The posting, which showed one photo of Trump with a pot belly was accompanied by a further three showing a slimmed down Donald, and came at the exact same time the judge in his New York case, Justice Arthur F. Engoron, was making his ruling.

Further investigation reveals however the image is not AI at all, but a photoshopped image of 57-year-old golfing cult hero and longtime Trump supporter, John Daly, in an image taken in 2017.

While on the other side of the aisle, AI generated robocalls went out to voters in New Hampshire in January featuring Joe Biden's voice telling people not to vote because the primary was a 'bunch of malarkey' adding 'save your vote for the November election.

Trump's struggles to connect with black voters go back to his first campaign in 2016. 

In February, Trump claimed that his four criminal indictments would make him popular among black voters because they see him as a victim of discrimination, comparing his legal jeopardy to the historic legacy of anti-Black prejudice in the U.S. legal system. 

Trump argues he is the victim of political persecution, even though there is no evidence Biden or White House officials influenced the filing of 91 felony charges against him.

'I got indicted for nothing, for something that is nothing,' Trump told black conservatives in South Carolina. 

'And a lot of people said that’s why the Black people like me, because they have been hurt so badly and discriminated against, and they actually viewed me as I’m being discriminated against. It’s been pretty amazing but possibly, maybe, there’s something there.' 

Republicans face an uphill battle in courting Black voters, who are overwhelmingly supportive of the Democratic Party. And while Black voter enthusiasm for Biden has cooled over the last year, only 25 percent of black Americans said that they had a favorable view of Trump, according to an AP poll in December. 

Trump has a long history of stoking racial tensions. From his earliest days as a New York real estate developer, Trump has faced accusations of racist business practices. 

In 1989, he took out full-page newspaper ads calling for New York to reinstate the death penalty as five Black and Latino teenagers were set to stand trial for beating and raping a white woman in Central Park. 

The five men were eventually exonerated in 2002 after another man admitted to the crime and it was determined their confessions were coerced. 

He spent years spreading the lie that Obama was ineligible to hold office. When he was president, Trump derided 's***hole countries' in Africa and said that four congresswoman of color should go back to the 'broken and crime-infested' countries they come from, ignoring the fact that all of the women are American citizens and three were born in the US.