Key Points
Reporters from multiple outlets reported directly on the crowds in their accounts: Local outlet MLive estimated the crowd size at 15,000, for instance, while The New York Times noted that the event was witnessed by thousands of people and news outlets, including The New York Times, and the number of attendees claimed by her campaign is in line with what was visible on the ground...
Suffice it to say that this mountain of evidence from direct sources weighs more heavily than marked-up images from conservative commentators like Chuck Callesto and Dinesh D'Souza, both of whom have been caught spreading election disinformation in the past...
It's incredibly easy for a social media user to create an AI-generated image, claim it came from a news report or live footage of an event, then use obvious flaws in that fake image as "evidence" that the event itself was faked..
While tracking down original and/or corroborating sources is useful for a major news event like a presidential rally, confirming the authenticity of single-sourced images and videos can be trickier..
By encouraging his followers to doubt images that are clearly authentic (and that can be trivially confirmed as such), Trump appears to be trying to create a media environment where AI's mere existence means even multiple reliable sources of corroborating information can't necessarily be trusted..
