In a parallel reality, Donald Trump reigns as king, fighter pilot, and Superman, and his political opponents are cast as criminals and laughingstocks — an unprecedented weaponization of AI imagery by a sitting American president.Trump has ramped up his use of artificial intelligence-generated content on his Truth Social channel since starting his second White House term, making his administration the first to deploy hyper-realistic fake visuals as a core communications strategy.Trump, no stranger to conspiracy theories and unfounded claims, has used the content in his breathless social media commentary to glorify himself and skewer his critics — particularly during moments of national outrage.Last month, he posted a fake video showing himself wearing a crown and flying a fighter jet labeled “King Trump” that dumps what appears to be excrement on crowds of protesters.The clip — accompanied by singer Kenny Loggins’s “Danger Zone” — was posted the same day as nationwide “No Kings” protests against what critics called his authoritarian behavior.In another post, the White House depicted Trump as Superman amid fevered social media speculation about his health.”THE SYMBOL OF HOPE,” the post said.”SUPERMAN TRUMP.”- ‘Distort reality’ -Trump or the White House have similarly posted AI-made images showing the president dressed as the pope, roaring alongside a lion, and conducting an orchestra at the Kennedy Center, a venerable arts complex in the US capital.The fabricated imagery has deceived social media users, some of whom questioned in comments whether they were authentic.It was unclear whether the imagery was generated by Trump himself or his aides. The White House did not respond to AFP’s request for comment.Wired magazine recently labeled Trump “America’s first generative AI president.””Trump peddles disinformation on and offline to boost his own image, attack his adversaries and control public discourse,” Nora Benavidez, senior counsel at the advocacy group Free Press, told AFP.”For someone like him, unregulated generative AI is the perfect tool to capture people’s attention and distort reality.”In September, the president triggered outrage after posting an apparent AI-generated video of himself promising every American access to all-healing “MedBed” hospitals.MedBed, a widely debunked conspiracy theory popular among far-right circles, refers to an imaginary medical device equipped with futuristic technology. Adherents say it can cure any ailment, from asthma to cancer.Trump’s phony clip — later deleted without any explanation — was styled as a Fox News segment and featured his daughter-in-law Lara Trump promoting a fictitious White House launch of the “historic new health care system.”- ‘Campaigning through trolling’ -“How do you bring people back to a shared reality when those in power keep stringing them along?” asked Noelle Cook, a researcher and author of “The Conspiracists: Women, Extremism, and the Lure of Belonging.”Trump has reserved the most provocative AI posts for his rivals and critics, using them to rally his conservative base.In July, he posted an AI video of former president Barack Obama being arrested in the Oval Office and appearing behind bars in an orange jumpsuit.Later, he posted an AI clip of House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries — who is Black — wearing a fake mustache and a sombrero.Jeffries slammed the image as racist.”While it would in many ways be desirable for the president of the United States to stay above the fray and away from sharing AI images, Trump has repeatedly demonstrated that he sees his time in office as a non-stop political campaign,” Joshua Tucker, co-director of the New York University Center for Social Media and Politics, told AFP.”I would see his behavior more as campaigning through trolling than actively trying to propagate the false belief that these images depict reality.”Mirroring Trump’s strategy, California Governor Gavin Newsom on Tuesday posted an apparent AI video on X lampooning Republicans after Democrats swept key US elections.The clip depicted wrestlers inside a ring with superimposed faces of Democratic leaders knocking down their Republican opponents, including Trump. The post read: “Now that’s what we call a takedown.”

Tech firms are floating the idea of building data centers in space and tapping into the sun’s energy to meet out-of-this-world power demands in a fierce artificial intelligence race.US startup Starcloud this week sent a refrigerator-sized satellite containing an Nvidia graphics processing unit (GPU) into orbit in what the AI chip maker touted as a “cosmic debut” for the mini-data center.”The idea is that it will soon make much more sense to build data centers in space than it does to build them on Earth,” Starcloud chief executive Philip Johnston said at a recent tech conference in Riyadh.Along with a constant supply of solar energy, data centers are easier to cool in space, advocates note.Announcements have come thick and fast, the latest being Google this week unveiling plans to launch test satellites by early 2027 as part of its Suncatcher project.That news came just days after tech billionaire Elon Musk claimed his SpaceX startup should be capable of deploying data centers in orbit next year thanks to its Starlink satellite program.Starcloud’s satellite was taken into space by a SpaceX rocket on Sunday.- Junk and radiation -Current projects to put data centers into orbit envision relying on clusters of low Earth orbit satellites positioned close enough together to ensure reliable wireless connectivity.Lasers will connect space computers to terrestrial systems.”From a proof concept, it’s already there,” University of Arizona engineering professor Krishna Muralidharan, who is involved with such work, said of the technology.Muralidharan believes space data centers could be commercially viable in about a decade.Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, the tech titan behind private space exploration company Blue Origin, has estimated it might take up to twice that long.Critical technical aspects of such operations need to be resolved, particularly harm done to GPUs by high levels of radiation and extreme temperatures as well as the danger of being hit by space junk.”Engineering work will be necessary,” said University of Michigan assistant professor of engineering Christopher Limbach, contending that it is a matter of cost rather than technical feasibility.- Sun synched -The big draw of space for data centers is power supply, with the option of synchronizing satellites to the sun’s orbit to ensure constant light on solar panels.Tech titans building AI data centers have ever-growing need for electricity, and have even taken to investing in nuclear power plants.Data centers in space also avoid the challenges of acquiring land and meeting local regulations or community resistance to projects.And advocates argue that data centers operating in space are less harmful overall to the environment, aside from the pollution generated by rocket launches.Water needed to cool a space data center would be about the same amount used by a space station, relying on exhaust radiators and re-using a relatively small amount of liquid.”The real question is whether the idea is economically viable,” said Limbach.An obstacle to deploying servers in space has been the cost of getting them into orbit.But a reusable SpaceX mega-rocket called Starship with massive payload potential promises to slash launch expenses by at least 30 times.”Historically, high launch costs have been a primary barrier to large-scale space-based systems,” Suncatcher project head Travis Beals said in a post.But project launch pricing data suggests prices may fall by the mid-2030s to the point at which “operating a space-based data center could become comparable” to having it on Earth, Beals added.”If there ever was a time to chart new economic paths in space — or re-invent old ones — it is now,” Limbach said.

Boeing reached a last-minute settlement in one of two lawsuits in this week’s trial in Chicago over a 2019 737 MAX crash that killed 157 people, attorneys announced Wednesday.The agreement leaves a single plaintiff remaining in the first civil trial over the March 2019 Ethiopian Airlines crash, which began in earnest Wednesday after jury selection wrapped up a day earlier.The litigation centers on how to calculate monetary damages to plaintiffs from Boeing, which acknowledges the need to compensate victims but disputes the amount.Opening statements were pushed back after the plaintiffs’ attorney, Robert Clifford, announced a settlement involving the relatives of Kenyan-born Mercy Ndivo, who died in the crash aged 28 along with her husband, leaving behind a daughter and her parents.”Our clients are very appreciative of the court allowing them to use its resources to achieve the justice they required,” said Clifford, adding that the settlement amount was confidential.During Wednesday’s proceeding, Ndivo’s father, Frederick Ndivo, approached US District Judge Jorge Alonso and expressed gratitude. Ndivo was joined in the courtroom by his wife and eldest daughter.”We are so grateful,” Ndivo said in court. “We wish the legal system of the United States will continue upholding the rights of the people… the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”The lawsuits stem from the March 10, 2019, flight that crashed six minutes after departing Addis Ababa for Nairobi, killing all 157 people on board.Family members of 155 victims filed lawsuits between April 2019 and March 2021, alleging wrongful death and negligence, among other claims.Alonso has been splitting the cases into groups with five or six plaintiffs at a time. In prior rounds, the judge has canceled proceedings after all the cases in a group settled.In addition to Ndivo, Clifford reached settlements with relatives of two other victims, Abdul Jalil Qaid Ghazi Hussein, 38, the father of seven children and Nasrudin Mohammed, 30, who was pregnant with a fourth child.- Remaining litigants -Litigants in the remaining case are the relatives of Shikha Garg of New Delhi, a consultant for the United Nations Development Program who had been traveling to Nairobi for a UN Environmental Assembly.In opening remarks on the case, Shanin Specter, an attorney for Garg’s survivors, described the victim as “beautiful, inside and out.”He painted a picture of an accomplished young woman who had just married her partner of six years, Soumya Bhattacharya, three months before the crash.A photo showed Bhattacharya and Garg on their wedding day, dressed in traditional Indian clothes of red and glittering gold. The two had met while working at the United Nations and were supposed to fly to Kenya together, but Bhattacharya had a work conflict.”It’s one of the biggest remorse in my life that I had not been able to be with her,” Bhattacharya said. He said they wanted to have children together, adding: “We would have been a happy family.” He explained he is now afraid to fly, especially on Boeing-manufactured planes.”She wrote to him that she would call him when she landed,” Specter said. “A phone call that was never made.”- Damages -The jury must award money in four categories including compensating Garg’s lifetime earnings, the trauma she endured before the crash, fair compensation for Bhattacharya’s loss of companionship and the harms associated with his grief.”Mr. Bhattacharya is not here for your sympathy!” Specter said. “He is here for justice.”In his opening statement defending Boeing, attorney Dan Webb did not dispute Boeing’s full responsibility for the accident. He urged the jury to render a verdict that would compensate Garg and her husband, but disputed Specter’s contention that Garg suffered injuries before the crash. “Boeing agrees with Mr. Specter that Boeing should pay significant compensation,” Webb said. “We disagree on the actual amount.”

Donald Trump emerged battered by an election night that was disastrous for his party, after failing to deliver on the promise that secured his second White House term: lowering the cost of living for Americans.Tuesday’s vote was “not expected to be a victory,” Trump told Republican senators a day after elections in Virginia, New Jersey and New York handily won by the Democratic opposition.”I don’t think it was good for Republicans,” he added.Steve Bannon, one of the leading architects of Trump’s Make America Great Again movement, had foreshadowed the Democratic success: “The warning signs are flashing.””It was a very, very bad night for Donald Trump,” said Robert Rowland, a professor of communication at the University of Kansas.Democratic wins on Tuesday night shared “a common theme: the cost of living,” said Thomas Kahn, a professor of political science at American University in Washington.- Life of a baron -Billionaire Trump, 79, proclaimed Wednesday that the US has “the hottest economy we’ve ever had.”But that sentiment clashes with “the reality that people experience when they go to the grocery store,” Rowland said.Trump has also repeatedly claimed that gas prices are at $2 per gallon ($0.52 per liter), including in a Fox News interview Wednesday, while a tracker by AAA showed the national average at $3.08 — around the same price as a year ago.Polls show Americans are increasingly dissatisfied with the cost of living, along with rising concern over the impact of Trump’s global tariff war.Instead of hammering home messages about rising costs and kitchen-table issues, Trump’s gone “completely off script,” Kahn said.Recent gold-and-marble renovations at the White House and an opulent Halloween party at his Mar-a-Lago estate show a US leader out of touch with ordinary citizens, he said.”The American people are suffering…facing these high prices and struggling, they watch Donald Trump live the life of a baron,” Kahn said.Trump also blamed Tuesday’s Republican losses on the federal government shutdown — now the longest ever at 36 days.It has led to hits on social welfare programs, unpaid leave for hundreds of thousands of federal workers, and pared back public services.- ‘Kamikaze’ -Far from signaling a willingness to compromise, Trump slammed “kamikaze” Democratic lawmakers and has urged Senate Republicans to force through a budget bill by abandoning a longstanding 60-vote threshold for most legislation.Without the so-called filibuster, Trump and his party would be able to unilaterally pass reforms, including a voter ID law he believes would favor Republicans ahead of next year’s midterm elections.Republican candidates are wary, after seeing voters who supported Trump in 2024 turn to Democratic candidates on Tuesday.Conservatives “have really tied themselves to Trump, but Trump is now underwater,” said Wendy Schiller, a political scientist at Brown University.Republicans now face the problem of “how do they uncouple from Trump,” she said. “What these elections showed is that they’re on the wrong side of these issues, according to a lot of voters.”However, Republican candidates are reluctant to directly oppose Trump for fear of being sidelined by more radical candidates, Rowland said.Trump’s comeback abilities are also unparalleled, considering his White House reelection after a criminal conviction and the deadly January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol by his supporters.”Anybody in the past who’s ever counted out Donald Trump loses the bet,” Kahn said.His return to power wasn’t solely due to the unwavering support of his base, but because he was able to attract undecided voters concerned about making ends meet.”He can survive anything except bad economic news,” Rowland said.