AI-Generated 'Trump Gaza' Video Sparks Controversy and Raises Concerns About Misinformation

Donald Trump's A.I. Propaganda

Just before midnight on February 25th, President Donald Trump posted a thirty-three-second video to Truth Social, the right-wing social network he owns, featuring the tagline "GAZA 2025 WHATS NEXT?" The clip shows victims of war scrabbling in gray rubble and running from soldiers, until the color palette suddenly brightens and the people pass through an archway into the promised land of "Trump Gaza": a grotesquely slick seaside metropolis of modernist beachfront mansions, hotels, and casinos branded with the President's name. Money rains down from the sky, above a simulacrum of Elon Musk. Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu sip cocktails bare-chested on the beach. Effigies of Trump's head abound, including atop a towering golden statue of the man. The statue's disproportionately long legs were just one clue that the video's strangely smooth and symmetrical compositions were made using artificial intelligence. Its soundtrack was an A.I.-generated, clubby song with lyrics such as "Trump Gaza shining bright, golden future, a brand new light." Earlier in February, Trump had threatened to "take over" Gaza, forcibly relocate its population of two million, and turn it into the "Riviera of the Middle East." The A.I. video made the neocolonialist mission nauseatingly explicit. Trump's sharing of the clip to his nine million followers on Truth Social, with no acknowledgment of its source, suggested that he was claiming it as a rendering of his policy plans. It immediately found a wider audience: headlines, including one from NPR, described the video as "Trump's." In fact, it is the work of two Israeli American filmmakers, Solo Avital and Ariel Vromen, who run an A.I.-driven studio in Los Angeles called EyeMix Immersive Visuals. The pair created the clip in early February, in the course of eight hours, as a way to test the capacities of the generative-A.I. software Arcana Labs, which is made by another L.A.-based company. The news of Trump's Gaza statements had just broken and, Avital told me on a recent video call, miming an expression of shock, "I couldn't believe my ears and my eyes." Avital grew up near Tel Aviv but spent a lot of time near the Gaza border. "I always believed in the idea of coexistence," he said. But he added that he's felt alienated at times by liberal "cancel culture" and wokeness and thinks the left's vision of a liberated Palestine, so long as Hamas remains in power, is as fantastical as Trump's plan for a Middle East Riviera. "What if Trump really will take over Gaza? I mean, it's not such a bad thought. I'm not totally against it," he said, but added, of Palestinians, "I think it's not realistic unless he includes them in it." Avital set out to make a video that depicted "giving the Palestinians a Dubai-lavish life style" -- Trump's Gaza plan, minus the mass expulsion -- while satirizing Trump's self-aggrandizement. ("I have a touch for comedy," he assured me.) Stationed at his computer in L.A., Avital created A.I. models of Trump and Musk, then generated one scene after another by feeding Arcana prompts: "Imagine if Trump Plaza was Trump Gaza"; "A Dubai-like beach with yachts and restaurants"; "Elon Musk in a restaurant eating hummus." He insisted that the video was not meant to be callous. "I didn't do it to make people look down at the Palestinians," he said. But perhaps his Trump satire was not as pointed as he'd hoped. Avital sent the finished video to Vromen. The two passed it around among friends and family, then Vromen, who is an established filmmaker for outlets including Netflix, put it on his Instagram, where he has more than a hundred thousand followers. But Avital urged him to take it down quickly, worrying that they might attract trouble for mocking Trump. Trump, who is not known to shy away from gold, or an effigy, seems instead to have found the video inspiring. Avital and Vromen don't know exactly how Trump obtained the clip, which had been on Instagram for only a few hours, but on the day Trump shared it, Avital's phone lit up with a barrage of messages. He told me that, in the time since, he has experienced online threats and hacking attempts, but that he was most bothered by the fact that Trump had shared the video shorn of any context. "You give the public the ability to kidnap it and abduct it into their own narrative," Avital said. What was made as a quickie experiment has become one of the most consequential A.I.-generated videos to date, an animated successor to the "Balenciaga Pope" image, from 2023, but this time serving as a piece of internet-native political propaganda. Trump's misleading appropriation of the video was just the latest example of the new Administration turning digital content, produced in-house or found online, into a form of MAGA agitprop. On February 18th, the official White House account on X posted a video without attribution titled "ASMR: Illegal Alien Deportation Flight," a clip that appeared to show immigrants being forced onto planes as the sounds of clinking handcuffs and roaring engines played softly in the background. The joke, if you can call it that, seemed to be casting a scene of state terror as an example of the soothing autonomous-sensory-meridian-response videos that proliferate online. On February 19th, reaffirming Trump's promise to kill New York City's new congestion pricing, the White House account on X posted a faux Time cover of Trump as king, wearing a crown against a backdrop of the city's skyline. Cumulatively, these pieces of content amount to more than A.I. slop; they help to create a digital mirror world that reflects the future that Trump imagines, however preposterous it may seem. In the real world, Trump's vision of Gaza as an ethnically cleansed luxury resort may seem like political fantasy. But, on the internet, Trump Gaza already exists as a virtual beachside destination to like and to share. During his first term in office, Trump used social media as a round-the-clock bully pulpit, spewing threats and insults and self-regard. His Twitter account was a megaphone that reached not just his base of supporters but the world at large. By the time he had his account suspended for inciting the riot of January 6, 2021, he had collected eighty-eight million followers. Today, the titillating, increasingly extreme content he produces is targeted at a more self-selecting audience. In recent years, the social-media landscape has become fragmented, and right-wing audiences have coalesced around Truth Social and X. The respective owners of those platforms, Trump and Musk, are now running the federal government while continuing to cultivate their online echo chambers of MAGA glorification and viral mistruths, and, with the popularization of generative A.I., the misinformation is no longer confined to chaotic tweets. Avital said that the virality of his Gaza video made it clear to him that A.I. is a dangerous boon for extremist politicians: "The wildest idea that you ever imagined could be visualized right now." A.I. tools in filmmaking tend to serve as technical assistance, performing tasks such as editing or color grading. A.I. apps, including Runway and Sora, are capable of generating short clips. But Arcana is designed to be a comprehensive A.I.-based production and editing suite, using basic language instructions to generate images and video clips out of thin air and then string them together into longer movies. Jonathan Yunger, who co-founded Arcana in 2023, told me that he values verisimilitude in the software's output above all. "We're constantly fine-tuning and making models for realism," he said, but the technology is not perfect. Regarding the Trump Gaza video, he added, "It's clear that it wasn't real." However blatantly A.I.-generated, though, the video gains a veneer of believability from the fact that the President of the United States is disseminating it. The imagery is only as harrowingly uncanny as the Trump Presidency itself. Avital compared the threat of A.I. to Orson Welles's 1938 radio adaptation of H. G. Wells's "The War of the Worlds," which stirred a panic among some listeners who believed that a real alien invasion was upon them. Like the radio listeners of yore, audiences for A.I. have not yet built up fluency in the medium, making them susceptible to manipulation. Avital imagined a chilling scenario in which someone posted an A.I. clip of "Trump announcing that he's beginning the Third World War, and he just launched a nuclear weapon toward Russia." How persuasively realistic would that footage be? If powerful people shared it, what terrible misunderstandings might ensue? A.I. technology is growing more capable all the time; its advance is being measured in months, not years. Of the Trump Gaza video, Avital said, "If we really had to make this as a movie, we would invest a week on it, and you wouldn't be able to tell if it's real or not." ♦

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

Co-creators Solo Avital and Ariel Vromen said they're not sure how their video made its way to the president and that the video was meant to be satirical. 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. "It was exactly the same minute that Trump was announcing this thing on TV, like, almost like in the background, you know, it was, 'Hey, why don't we do that? Let's do a little satire,'" Avital recounted. On Feb. 4, during a news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump suggested that the U.S. could relocate Palestinians, at least temporarily, to other countries, and "level the site" to create a "Riviera of the Middle East." Vromen said he was in Las Vegas when Trump made his proposal, which inspired the idea and aesthetics of the video. "The idea was like, how Trump wants to turn Gaza into Vegas," Vromen said. "We wanted to have an internal laugh about it. It was a joke." The video, completed on Feb. 6 according to records Avital and Vromen showed NBC News, delivered on that vision, with absurd depictions of Elon Musk eating pita, Trump sipping tropical drinks shirtless with Netanyahu, and dollar bills raining down on Palestinian children. Avital and Vromen, who are from Israel and now live in the United States, each said the video was satire, taking Trump's proposal and pushing it to an extreme level of imagination, but it wasn't necessarily critical. Vromen said that he thinks Trump's proposal is one of the few forward-thinking policy proposals that could address a longstanding stalemate in the region. "You look at Trump Gaza, and you're like, 'Hey, gazillion times better than what it is right now, whether it's good or bad,'" he said. "With humor, there is truth, you know, but it was not our intention to be a propaganda machine." Trump's suggestion caused shock waves across the world, with some analysts and politicians comparing the proposal of displacing 2.2 million Palestinians to ethnic cleansing. While supported by some in Israel and the U.S., Trump's suggestion was widely condemned, even by some allies. After Hamas' attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, in which 1,200 people were killed and another 250 kidnapped, local Palestinian officials say Israel has killed over 47,500 Palestinians. Vromen explained that the bearded dancers in the video were meant to poke fun at members of Hamas. "Yes, that was a disrespectful, maybe, portrayal," he said, pointing out Hamas' recent handling of dead Israeli hostages, which outraged many Israelis. "The real intention of this specific piece -- I thought that Gaza will be so liberated that it will become woke," Avital said. After the duo finished the video, they shared it with a limited group of people. "We circulated it in a few groups of friends to get a reaction, like you're writing a draft of a script," Vromen said. "I posted [it] for about three hours on my Instagram, and I took it off because I started to get some brands that didn't understand, again, the context." Vromen is a film director and DJ who may be best known for the 2012 movie The Iceman, which features Chris Evans, Winona Ryder, James Franco and Michael Shannon. He has 138,000 Instagram followers. Online, the video didn't appear to travel widely before Trump shared it on his pages. NBC News found several pro-Israel social media accounts that shared the video in the days after Vromen briefly posted it, but it had not picked up any notable traction in the weeks after. Avital said he was shocked when three weeks later Trump posted it on Truth Social and Instagram with no caption. He said he was surprised Trump would post a video that contained a scene of him dancing with a woman in a club that wasn't his wife, and a scene of "himself standing erected in the center of the city as a golden statue, like some sort of a dictator." "I would never imagine in my life," he said. The pair said they wish Trump would have given some context with the video, or offered some credit. "At least give the context that this is something that was done with mixed intentions, because one intention was just like to react to news that was mind-blowing. And the other intention was like, 'Hey, maybe there is a vision behind it,'" said Vromen. He also said he feels Trump had stolen the video. "Trump has stolen our content because this was made by artists," Vromen said. "The Gaza Strip movie is perfect, unique original content that was taken out of context and published by the president of the United States." The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly previously said: "As President Trump has said, Gaza in its current state is unhabitable for any human being. President Trump is a visionary, and his plan to have the United States involved in Gaza's rebuilding will allow for Palestinians to resettle in new, beautiful communities while improving conditions in the region for generations to come." Generative AI has helped facilitate a boom of fake political imagery, which has been particularly embraced by Trump and members of the GOP. Trump and Musk have frequently shared AI-generated images glorifying themselves or denigrating others. Arcana Labs CEO Jonathan Yunger called the video "complete insanity," but welcomed the idea of artists expressing themselves via Arcana Labs' platform. "The video is not breaking any laws, as far as I'm concerned. And artists are going to express themselves. What people decide to do with that, you know, is up to them," said Yunger. "The fact that the president took it and posted it as his own, I think, is the one of the most insane things I've ever seen in my life."

'Trump Gaza' video shared by president originated from pro-Israel accounts that have embraced AI

The posts quickly drew condemnation from many users on Truth Social and Instagram, even from self-described Republicans. President Donald Trump posted a bizarre AI-generated video to social media Monday evening depicting an imagined future version of Gaza with bearded belly dancers on the beach, a giant golden statue of Trump, money raining from the sky, Elon Musk eating pita and a "Trump Gaza" hotel. The video, posted on Trump's Truth Social and Instagram accounts, appears to have been first spread by a network of pro-Israel social media accounts. It draws on images generated by artificial intelligence that were created after Trump said in early February that the U.S. would "take over the Gaza Strip." The posts quickly drew condemnation from many users on Truth Social and Instagram, even from people who identified themselves as Republicans. It's the latest instance of Trump embracing generative AI and images created by the technology. He has frequently posted images on Truth Social that appear AI-made. The Gaza video appears to be referencing Trump's statements during a press conference on Feb. 4 with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Trump suggested then that the U.S. could relocate Palestinians to other countries and "level the site" to create a "Riviera of the Middle East." In a statement provided to NBC News, White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly said: "As President Trump has said, Gaza in its current state is unhabitable for any human being. President Trump is a visionary, and his plan to have the United States involved in Gaza's rebuilding will allow for Palestinians to resettle in new, beautiful communities while improving conditions in the region for generations to come." The earliest post found by NBC News of the AI-generated video online was posted on Feb. 7 by pro-Israel X account Nazi Hunters (@huntersofnazis). "Looks like the Gaz-A-Lago resort already dropped its first official tourism promo 😂," the account wrote in the post. The account, which posts a mix of pro-Israeli and anti-Palestinian memes, photos and news, did not respond to requests for comment, but seemed to suggest that they created the video in posts made Tuesday. "It was a joke 😂," they wrote, responding to a user who posted about Trump's use of the video. "So, it seems like Trump also saw it... 😭," they wrote in another post. It's not clear exactly how the video was created and produced or how it came to Trump's attention, but it used at least one AI-generated image that had gone viral just a day after Trump's statements about Gaza. On Feb. 5, an image that appears to have been created with Grok AI, X's AI service, began to circulate. It included a Grok AI watermark, and showed Trump sitting next to Netanyahu on the beach with colorful drinks in front of a sign that read "Trump Riviera." One of the first X accounts that posted the image is an account called Glasgow Friends of Israel (@GlasgowFOI), which posts similar content to the Nazi Hunters account. "A view of #Gaza's future? Warmer than #TrumpTurnberry. Add some golf courses, casinos, hotels, strip clubs and a wrestling arena, and it could be the ultimate #Trump resort. #AmYisraelChai #StandWithIsrael," the account wrote in the post. Glasgow Friends of Israel did not respond to a request for comment. The image quickly spread, getting reposted by a variety of accounts across the political spectrum. Filmmaker Morgan J. Freeman, who has posted content that's critical of Trump, shared the image on X. His post was viewed over 700,000 times. The image was one of the first of a series of memes posted imagining what a Trump Riviera or Trump Gaza would look like, with some featuring golf courses and buildings. Creators on both sides of the Israeli-Gaza conflict have used generative AI to create memes and political content since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas' attack on Israel. Accounts devoted to spreading generative AI content centered on the war have gained thousands of followers since the war began. The video posted by Trump, though, has drawn a notably negative reaction, even from users who claim to be Republicans. On Truth Social, where the user base is predominantly composed of conservatives, many of the comments the platform labeled as "trending" condemned the post. On Instagram, influencers who had supported Trump through the campaign questioned why he was posting it. In Gaza, people who spoke to NBC News condemned the video. "We as Palestinians won't let Trump and his people, his group, do what he wants to do as he did in this video. We can't accept that," said Hussam Al Sharif, a 19-year-old student at the University of Palestine. "This is not our traditions. This is not our culture. We will not let the foreign people come here in Gaza and destroy our country and to rebuild it as they want."

Viral Trump Gaza Video Shows How Quickly AI Slop Can Spread

Imad is a senior reporter covering Google and internet culture. Hailing from Texas, Imad started his journalism career in 2013 and has amassed bylines with The New York Times, The Washington Post, ESPN, Tom's Guide and Wired, among others. President Donald Trump on Tuesday shared via his Truth Social outlet a fanciful AI-generated video of an imagined postwar Gaza, envisioning the territory as a Dubai-like vacation resort with him and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lounging on the beach. The video drew ire from many in the comments section as weird, distasteful and bizarre. The origins of the video are unclear, though it might be from pro-Israel accounts that pump out AI-generated content, according to a report from NBC News. The video seems to have surfaced on Feb. 7, days after Trump announced his idea to take over the Gaza Strip, temporarily clearing out its inhabitants and creating a new Riviera. The video consists of short animated segments of an imagined futuristic Gaza -- in the actual present a scene of devastation and displaced people following a year and a half of fighting -- that features golden buildings, golden statues of Trump, bearded belly dancers and Elon Musk chowing down on a bread bowl. The general vibe is glamour and an extravagant playground for the rich. These types of videos are referred to as AI slop, which is low quality, useless or misleading content AI-generated content meant to drive any sort of online engagement. Henry Ajder, an AI and deepfake cartographer and founder of Latent Space Advisory, said it doesn't help that this technology is so much easier and cheaper to access nowadays. "The political impact of deepfakes in synthetic media is less about deception and more about emboldening and kind of creating a message and a brand," he said. When contacted for comment, the White House declined to confirm or deny its involvement with the creation of the video and instead forwarded a statement it sent to other outlets. "As President Trump has said, Gaza in its current state is unhabitable for any human being," White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly said in a statement. "President Trump is a visionary, and his plan to have the United States involved in Gaza's rebuilding will allow for Palestinians to resettle in new, beautiful communities while improving conditions in the region for generations to come." The idea is logistically and politically complex, has been criticized by human rights groups, and has not gained support from any neighboring countries. This isn't the first time a politician has turned to deepfake technology to rally support. In 2018, the Belgian Socialist Party released a deepfake video of Trump, during his first term in office, telling Belgians to withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement. Also that year, Gabon was thrown into a political crisis when President Ali Bongo, who had been out of the public eye due to a stroke, appeared in a deepfake video that led to an unsuccessful military coup. Ahead of the 2024 Indian elections, deepfake videos from multiple parties showcased rival politicians, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in a comical fashion. "It's actually very common in places like Southeast Asia, in places like India and Indonesia, for political parties or political figures to create this type of content, which is like very meme-focused," according to Alexandru Voica, head of corporate affairs and policy at British AI video company Synthesia. "So if you're from that part of the world, this is actually very common, but I guess now it's kind of made it into the United States." While Trump's Gaza video was the first time his new administration turned to AI-generated video to promote his ideas, he has used other provocative online content to rally support. In his first term as president, Trump uploaded an edited video of him as a wrestler beating up a CNN logo. According to researchers at the University of Chicago and Pennsylvania State University, deepfake content has successfully deceived 42% of Americans, based on the study's representative sample. While alarmingly high, this rate isn't higher than other forms of disinformation like text and audio. While Trump's Gaza video is very clearly fake, deepfake technology continues to improve and offer greater ease of access, which could lead to troubling outcomes in the future. And finding the original source of a deepfake piece of content is elusive, making accountability difficult. "We're seven and a half, eight years into the kind of development of deep fakes and synthetic media," Ajder said. "That's a drop in the ocean compared to where things might be going."

Trump’s AI Gaza Video Is the Tip of a Horrifying â€~Gaz-A-Lago’ Iceberg

Trump’s comments about turning Gaza into a resort have inspired hellish AI videos and memecoins. On Monday night President Donald Trump posted a nightmarish AI-generated video that depicted a Gaza rebuilt in his own image. NBC News tracked down the source of the video, but it’s only the tip of the iceberg. The “Trump Gaza†video is one piece of art that’s part of a grotesque online meme movement depicting “Gaz-A-Lago,†a place rife with namecoins, NFTS, and imagined futures. Trump posted the AI-generated videoâ€"which shows bearded belly dancers gyrating next to Trump, Elon Musk eating a pita, and a golden statue in the middle of a city squareâ€"on February 25, 2025. According to NBC News, the video was originally posted on X on February 7, days after Trump pitched turning Gaza into a resort community. On February 4, Trump appeared with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and pitched a bizarre and horrifying plan. “The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip, and we will do a job with it,†Trump said. “Everybody I have spoken to loves the idea of the United States owning that piece of land, developing and creating thousands of jobs with something that will be magnificent in a really magnificent area that nobody would know." It would, Trump said, become the “Riviera of the Middle East.†Online Trump fans took the image of a Trump casino and resort built up in the ruins of Gaza and ran with it. A day after the press conference, a Grok-generated image of Trump and Netanyahu sunning themselves on the “Gaza Riviera†appeared on X for the first time. Two days later, a moving version of that image appeared in the AI-generated video that Trump would make go viral weeks later. The source of the video appears to be an X account called “Nazi Hunters.†The account shares a mix of pro-Israel and anti-Palestinian content. Some of it is CCTV footage, some of it is commentary about the war in Gaza and anti-semitism, and some of it is AI-generated memes and videos. The video Trump shared is one of the first memetic visions of “Gaz-A-Lago†to break into the mainstream internet, but there’s a lot of it bubbling under the surface if you look. X is full of AI-generated images of sandy beaches and resort communities with a “Gaz-A-Lago†sign sitting next to the water. One of the most grotesque is a bird’s eye view of a golf course surrounded by a distant city. The words “All Eyes on Raffah†are spelled out on the green, a parody of a viral AI-generated image from last year. And then there are the memecoins. Over on pump.fun, a place where anyone can launch a cryptocurrency in a few minutes, there are too many “Gaz-A-Lago†coins to count. Most of them only have a market cap of a few thousand dollars, but there are a few that have broken through and grabbed up more than $10 grand in value. The most popular, with a market cap of $170,000 as of this writing, is “Gaz-A-Lago Official ($GAZA). The memecoin has a website. It’s promising NFTs, merch, and a community. In classic fly-by-night crypto fashion, its Telegram link goes nowhere, its Discord link is null, and its X account has been restricted. A note at the bottom of the site waves away the horror of what it’s doing. “This project is associated with a meme token and aims to bring levity to the ongoing conflict in Gaza,†the site says. “We acknowledge the serious nature of the situation and encourage constructive dialogue, empathy, and humanitarian support.†$GAZA wants to sell people NFTs that imagine a Gaza rebuilt in Donald Trump’s image. The NFTs will feature luxury properties, exotic cars, and business assets. Its vision is “to reimagine Gaza as a premier luxury destination through blockchain-driven crowdfunding and digital ownership,†it says. If all goes well, the plan is to leverage earnings from the memecoin and NFTs into “physical infrastructure projects†that include “partnerships with tourism and real estate developers.†This is all, of course, a joke to its creator. It’s a memecoin, a rug-pull with a website on top of it to make it seem real. But it’s got a market cap approaching $200,000. Someone is making a little money here. And the creator is promising to donate 2% of all $GAZA transactions to humanitarian aid organizations. It says it supports UNICEF’s mission in Gaza. It’s possible, and even probable, that the pretensions to donate to humanitarian aid are a joke too. That disclaimer looms at the bottom of the website. “This website is purely satirical and is intended for entertainment and comedic purposes only,†it says. Yet there is a link that works on the website. “Buy $GAZA Now†will take you to pump.fun where you can spend real money on the satire built on human suffering and Trump’s delusional dream for the future of a devastated Gaza.

Trump Posts AI-Generated Video of Genderqueer Bellydancers Frolicking

Late last night, Donald Trump took to Truth Social, the social media platform he has a majority stake in, to publish a hallucinatory AI-generated video of what he purports a Trump-ruled Gaza Strip might one day look like. The video opens with synthetic clips depicting a war-torn Gaza, where ominous automatic rifle-wielding figures stand by while children run through rubble. That dire scene then melts away, and viewers are instead greeted with a string of AI-generated clips advertising an imagined Gaz-a-Lago: seaside high-rises, a person who looks like billionaire Elon Musk eating snacks and throwing cash at kids, a giant golden statue of the current American president, and Trump himself dancing with a scantily-clad woman and lounging poolside with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. People in this imagined Gaza also, apparently, according to the video, carry around golden balloons designed to look like Trump's head, and buy tiny golden statues of the self-styled American king. (The advertisement is even soundtracked by a promotional song, which sounds to be likely AI-generated as well.) And yet, somehow, that's not even all. Incredibly, the video also showcases a cohort of AI-generated dancers moving sensually on a beach, who despite their more traditionally feminine, ab-baring outfits have long hair and beards that present as masculine. Indeed: in Trump's gold-filled Gazan fantasyland, his imagined "riviera of the Middle East" includes gyrating trans, genderfluid, or otherwise gender-nonconforming bellydancers. The inclusion of the dancers in the clip is confounding given Trump's and his MAGA base's contempt for transgender and gender nonconforming people. Immediately after taking office, the 47th president signed an executive order decreeing that it's now the "policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female." Trump has also signed executive orders blocking people under the age of 19 from access to gender-affirming care, banning trans women from competing in women's sports, and forbidding trans people from serving in the military. Several of these actions, among others, are under some level of federal review. But as judges weigh the legality and scientific accuracy of the orders, the message is loud and clear: the Trump White House thinks there's something wrong with trans people, and will do anything possible to make their lives more difficult. On an intertwined note, the administration has also been hard at work waging a war on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, including the erasure of references to LBGTQ+ health from public databases. The president has elsewhere piled in on the demonizing of drag shows, canceling future drag events at the Kennedy Center -- where Trump, breaking from past presidencies, recently took over the board and programming -- while parroting the baseless far-right claim that drag performers target American kids. "Just last year, the Kennedy Center featured Drag Shows specifically targeting our youth," the president claimed -- again, baselessly -- earlier this month in a Truth Social post. "THIS WILL STOP." All to say, it feels very unlikely that the current president's vision for Trump Gaza would include provocatively dancing seaside xaddies rocking long beards and midriff-revealing bikinis and skirts. But here we are, and to that end, the dancing figures' inclusion in the promotional video raises unfortunate questions. After all, this isn't the account of a random poster; this is an official channel of the president of the United States. It's hard to believe that the clip went through any comprehensive review by a communications team, let alone careful scrutiny by the president himself. Of course, Trump has a well-documented affinity for AI. During the run-up to the 2024 election, he posted AI-generated images depicting his then-opponent, former vice president Kamala Harris, as a communist; synthetic pictures himself praying; and AI-made imagery showing fake lines of immigrants pouring out of apocalyptic-looking hospitals. And on the note of scrutiny, he's also been known -- with alarming frequency -- to mistake synthetic content as the real deal: the faux "Swifties for Trump" debacle was a perfect example, as was his recent mistaking of an AI crypto meme for a real image of a General Motors car. (It's also worth noting that the AI slop has been embraced more broadly by the MAGA movement -- though other folks have been dipping their toe in that pool these days, too.) To be sure, there are plenty of real things wrong with this video. That the president of the United States would post AI slop advertising the remodeling of a war-torn region -- a place where tens of thousands of Palestinians, children included, are dead and dozens of Israeli hostages are still awaiting release -- at a time when continued peace talks are entering a crucial and tentative new phase is disturbing on its face. The AI-generated Trump Gaza ad also fails to show the grim realities of what it means to forcibly displace millions of people, as Trump himself has said his grand remodeling idea would involve. And, by the way, Judeo-Christian texts are pretty clear that installing giant golden statues in or near the Holy Lands is... well, not great. Add it all up, and our bearded beachfront heroes feel like the only real glimmer of hope in this synthetically-crafted dreamscape -- even if their inclusion is likely the result of a too-quick social media trigger finger.

Trump's AI video shows Gaza as lavish resort, drawing criticism

The US president posted an AI-generated video of the Gaza Strip as a luxury tourist destination on social media, which users have slammed as offensive and experts warn perpetuates a dangerous narrative. US President Donald Trump shocked social media users when he posted an AI-generated video showing a futuristic vision of Gaza, transformed into a utopian luxury resort. The video, which Trump shared on both Instagram and his own Truth Social platform, depicts a fake scenario where the war-torn land is rebuilt as a high-end beachfront destination, complete with palm tree-lined streets, gilded Trump-branded buildings, and lavish entertainment. Among the surreal elements included in the clip are a giant gold statue of Trump himself, bearded belly dancers, and AI-generated versions of Elon Musk and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sunbathing. Critics say the video, set to upbeat music with lyrics proclaiming "Trump Gaza is finally here," portrays a vision of the region that erases its current destruction and suffering while proposing an American-led redevelopment project. "The video is quite telling of how President Trump sees Gaza and the possible destruction of Gaza. It has so many elements that need to be analysed carefully", Alessandro Accorsi, senior analyst for Technology and Conflict at the International Crisis Group, said. The controversy surrounding the video stems not only from its unrealistic portrayal of Gaza but also from its underlying implications. Trump has already suggested that the US could take control of the Palestinian territory, claiming it has "the best location in the Middle East" and could be turned into "a better Monaco". His administration's reported discussions with real estate developers about rebuilding Gaza have raised concerns Trump's idea is not just political showmanship but a hint of an actual plan. Experts argue that the video promotes the idea of displacing Gaza's existing population, an act that would be a violation of international law and widely condemned as ethnic cleansing. "It really leans into a narrative that has been used many times by the extreme right-wing, for example, in Israel, that presents Palestine as a land of desert and people living in caves without Israel's influence. At the beginning of the video, we see Palestinians coming out of a cave," Accorsi explained. Accorsi, whose role includes examining the use of cyber, electronic and information warfare in today's battlefields, adds that the video "shows that President Trump sees the issue of Gaza and its reconstruction as a real estate deal, which takes away any agency from the Palestinians themselves." "The fact that he's by the side of a pool with Prime Minister Netanyahu shows this. The idea is that Palestinians will be either displaced temporarily or that Israel will assume control of the Gaza Strip. It doesn't deal with any of the real issues that we see today," Accorsi said. "It's a narrative that tries to tell a multi-dimensional story, a very complex one, in a very unilateral and unidimensional way. It forgets the occupation, it forgets the blockade of Gaza, it forgets the responsibilities of Israel", he added. Insensitive and problematic Beyond the political implications, the video has been criticised for its insensitivity toward the suffering currently taking place in Gaza. The territory has been devastated by ongoing conflict, with tens of thousands of Palestinians killed, vast areas reduced to rubble, and a humanitarian crisis worsening daily. Many social media users expressed outrage at the spectacle of a luxury resort fantasy amid such widespread destruction, calling it a grotesque trivialisation of real human suffering. With elements that look like propaganda, such as the oversized Trump statue, the imagery reminded some users of historical instances of leaders using spectacle to justify controversial policies. "This kind of thing, which is obviously nonsense, fits into a much longer campaign and effort to portray what is happening today in Gaza as a consequence of 7 October. It erases at least 60 years, if not 100 years, of the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and what came before", explained Accorsi. Palestinian leaders, as well as human rights organisations, have previously condemned the portrayal of Gaza as a blank slate for development while its population continues to endure hardship. The UN has emphasised that forcibly relocating Palestinians from their land is illegal under international law.

President Shares Disgusting Vision in AI 'Trump Gaza' Video

Last month, Donald Trump presented an absolutely appalling plan to have the United States "take over the Gaza Strip" and "develop it." This would entail expelling the 2 million Palestinians who currently live in the war-ravaged territory and giving them no right of return. "I don't want to be cute, I don't want to be a wise guy, but the Riviera of the Middle East could be something," Trump said at a February 4 press conference. "This could be so magnificent." Many world leaders, activists, and religious figures agreed that Trump's plan "could be something" ... and that something is called ethnic cleansing. It's hard to imagine what could be worse than that, but somehow Trump found a way to make his vision for Gaza even more disgusting. Late on Tuesday, Trump shared an AI-generated video to Truth Social and Instagram that depicts "what's next" for Gaza. Apparently, the president dreams of turning the territory into a Dubai-esque city of skyscrapers where he will revel in his wealth with pals Elon Musk and Benjamin Netanyahu and be worshipped as a golden god. The deranged video crams a lot of information into just 33 seconds, so here's a breakdown. Throughout the clip, a dance track plays in the background proclaiming, "Trump Gaza's finally here!" These are the lyrics: Donald's coming to set you free, bringing the life for all to see. No more tunnels, no more fear, Trump Gaza is finally here. Trump Gaza shining bright, golden future, a brand-new life. Feast and dance; the deed is done. Trump Gaza No. 1. First we see the rubble that is present-day Gaza morph into a scene of children running onto a gorgeous beach with yachts and tall buildings in the background (presumably these are not Palestinian children as they will have been relocated). There are more scenes of palm-tree-lined luxury-shopping districts, then a shot of Elon Musk enjoying a hummuslike dip. The clip features four shots of the DOGE chief living it up in Gaza. In two, he is eating: And in two others, he is making it rain dollars: Trump will enjoy the pleasures of the new Gaza as well (maybe a bit too much: He looks pretty chunky throughout). We see Trump dancing with a scantily clad woman who is not his wife: And lounging on the beach with the Israeli prime minister: This new Gaza will actually be freer than the United States under Trump, judging from the bearded, bikini-clad belly dancers frolicking in public: Toward the end of the video, it's revealed that "Trump Gaza" doesn't just refer to the president's plan for the territory. It's actually the name of a new luxury resort: But Trump isn't just dreaming of slapping his name on another property. He wants to see the denizens of Gaza carrying golden Trump-head balloons (not to be confused with Trump-baby balloons): And perhaps basking in the glow of the Suddam Hussein-esque golden Trump statue: People can also buy tiny gold Trump statues so they can worship false idols in the comfort of their own home: Recently, members of the Trump administration have portrayed the president's plans for Gaza as a kind of negotiating tactic meant to spur Arab leaders into action, as the New York Times reported: After President Trump shocked the Arab world last month by suggesting the entire population of Gaza be expelled from the territory, his aides reframed the idea as an invitation to the leaders of the Middle East: Come up with a better plan, or do it our way. "All these countries say how much they care about the Palestinians," Secretary of State Marco Rubio said last week. "If the Arab countries have a better plan, then that's great," Mr. Rubio added. Presumably, some will argue that Trump is playing four-dimensional chess by dropping this revolting AI video. But maybe all it really shows is that Trump is a megalomaniac who doesn't care if Palestinians live or die and no longer feels the need to hide it.

Trump teases personal profit in AI video touting Gaza takeover plan

Driving the news: The AI-generated video Trump posted on his Truth Social account opens with a shot of ruins labeled "Gaza 2025" and set to a dance track. Zoom in: The bizarre images in the video include: The big picture: Trump said earlier this month that his takeover plan would entail a "permanent occupation" of Gaza by the U.S. that would see Palestinians displaced with no right of return, a plan that would violate international law. Between the lines: United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres lambasted Trump's proposal as "tantamount to ethnic cleansing." Reality check: Even members of the Trump administration admit that the president's rebuilding plan is unlikely to happen anytime soon, even without the geopolitical hurdles it would have to clear. The bottom line: A vision of Gaza filled with luxury skyscrapers is unlikely to happen in Trump's lifetime, let alone his presidency.

Trump Posts Grotesque Video Imagining Glitzy 'Trump Gaza'

Trump's D.C. Prosecutor Didn't Sign Arrest Warrant for MAGA Lawmaker Accused of Assault Tens of thousands dead, even more injured, millions displaced, and countless others still unaccounted for. Gaza remains the site of widespread devastation as international negotiators attempt to extend a fragile ceasefire, but that isn't stopping President Trump from posting grotesque, greedy fantasies about turning the Palestinian region into one of his resorts. Late Tuesday night, the president shared an AI-generated video on Truth Social imagining the war-torn region as a glitzy, gold-leaf-vomit homage to himself. "Gaza 2025: What's Next?" The video asks, before launching into a montage of AI slop clips depicting bloody rubble transforming into a Dubai-esque riviera, highlighted by the "Trump Gaza" resort. Children frolick in the streets holding golden balloons in the shape of Trump's head, and amorphous humanoids purchase golden figurines of the American president and stroll around a plaza dominated by a giant -- you guessed it -- golden statue of Trump. Yachts, skyscrapers, belly dancing women (with beards!), and luxury cars abound. The video also depicts Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lounging shirtless, drinks in hand, at the "Trump Gaza" hotel pool. Elon Musk is also featured heavily, scarfing down food on a beach and dancing in a rain of money. Throughout the video, a backing track proclaims: "Donald is coming to set you free / Bringing the light for all to see / No more tunnels, no more fear / Trump Gaza is finally here." "Trump Gaza shining bright / Golden future, a brand new ligh t/ Feast and dance the deed is done / Trump Gaza #1," the song continues. It's a twisted paradise for the rich and the well-connected, an imagined -- monstrous -- monument to the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their land. It's also the most explicit depiction of Trump's recent statements alluding to a desire to take ownership of the region and turn it into a real estate development. Last month, the president floated forcibly relocating Palestinians to "clean out" the region. "You're talking about probably a million and a half people, and we just clean out that whole thing. I don't know. Something has to happen, but it's literally a demolition site right now," Trump told reporters. "So, I'd rather get involved with some of the Arab nations, and build housing in a different location, where they can maybe live in peace for a change." A week before, Trump mused about Gaza's "phenomenal location" and how " "beautiful things could be done with it." Earlier this month, during a joint press conference with Netanyahu, Trump outright said that the "U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip." "We'll do a job with it, too. We'll own it," he added, promising to "level the site" and "get rid of all the destroyed buildings." "We have an opportunity to do something that could be phenomenal," Trump said. "I don't want to be cute, I don't want to be a wise guy, but the Riviera of the Middle East. This could be something that could be so magnificent." By the "Riviera of the Middle East," Trump apparently means his own little fiefdom, chock full of monuments to his own ego, built over the bones of the thousands of dead.