Almost since the day Martin Luther King Jr. was gunned down on that April evening in Memphis, his family has done all it can to protect his likeness and legacy.
His estate has challenged the commercial use of his image, filed suits over the use of his copyrighted speeches and policed the use of his recorded voice.
But social media — and now the proliferation of artificial intelligence, which offers powerful new ways to create photos, text, music and video — is making it harder for his heirs to prevent what they see as the exploitation of King’s legacy.
Recently, fake images of the civil rights leader, who died in 1968, have popped up on social media platforms, particularly X or the site formerly known as Twitter.
Most troubling for the family are doctored images linking King’s ideas and philosophies to those of former president Donald Trump, who has been criticized for describing those involved in the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests as terrorists; taken heat for his perceived defense of white nationalists; and, in a poll taken the last year of his presidency, was blamed for increasing racial tensions by more than 8 out of 10 Black Americans.
“We are navigating through some of the most dangerous waters that we have ever experienced in our nation,” said Martin Luther King III, the civil rights leader’s son. “When you create a false narrative, which AI is doing in this case, you are not teaching history accurately. There are no boundaries. There are no guardrails.”
Though it’s hard to know if AI was used, as opposed to another type of software, what is clear is that technological advances are making it easier and quicker to generate images that look like authentic photos.
The images of King and Trump were initially posted on Twitter by Brigitte Gabriel, a Lebanese-born conservative author and founder of Act For America, which the Council on American–Islamic Relations has described as “one of the main sources of growing anti-Muslim bigotry in our nation.”
On her X account, where she has close to 1 million followers, Gabriel is known to promote right-wing conspiracy theories and Trump. Her favorite targets are President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci.
Her posts are often accompanied by doctored or fake images. At least a half dozen times in July, she posted such images of King and Trump.
In several of them, Trump has his arm around King’s shoulder. In one, they are embraced. In another black-and-white image, which has garnered 11 million views since its July 15 posting, the two are depicted walking together triumphantly. The caption: “Two of our nation’s greatest advocates for Civil Rights: MLK and DJT.”
The post also got more than 2,400 comments, most of them negative.
“Wow Brigitte, this is a freshly achieved low. ... You could be a respectful human and delete it.”
Another described the image as “utterly vile and disgusting. MLK would have NEVER had anything to do with” Trump.
Gabriel did not respond to several attempts to reach her.
Alveda King, the niece of Martin Luther King Jr., and a close ally of Trump, is conflicted by the images.
Credit: Natrice Miller/AJC
Credit: Natrice Miller/AJC
“AI can be a landmine. The road to hell is paved with good intentions,” she said, adding that she’s met Gabriel. “Why the fantasy about the relationship? It is likely conjecture to suppose that Martin Luther King Jr. and Donald Trump would be best friends. I would advise everyone to take a deep breath and whisper a prayer.”
King III called it “unconscionable” that someone would link his father to Trump.
“This is a terrible mischaracterization of who Martin Luther King Jr. was. It does not mean that my dad would not have talked to Trump and challenged him, as he did with every president that lived during his life,” he said. “But it’s a different thing to say that he would be in agreement. There are very few things that were done under (Trump) that my father would have embraced.”
Credit: King Center
Credit: King Center
Through her spokeswoman, Bernice King, CEO of the King Center and the civil rights leader’s daughter, said she would not comment on the images, because she didn’t want to give them any more attention.
But in a tweet, she wrote: “Many who quote one #MLK line, tweet egregious AI photos of him, and evoke him to deter justice actually despise #TheInconvenientKing.”
“I’m with the King family in this case, because it won’t stop,” said engineer Calvin Lawrence, who is chief technical officer of Responsible and Trustworthy AI Global Markets at IBM. “I don’t think there’s anything that they can actually do because the folks who are doing it haven’t really broken any laws. It’ll keep happening until there’s some legislation and policies put in place to keep it from happening.”
Earlier this month, President Biden announced that seven leading AI companies — Amazon, Anthropic, Google, Inflection, Meta, Microsoft and OpenAI — agreed to voluntary safeguards on the technology’s development by committing to standards for safety, security and trust.
But the agreement stops short of establishing legal and regulatory guidelines for the development and distribution of artificial intelligence.
X does not prohibit the sharing of fake images. And artificial intelligence software is now readily available to anybody.
AI tools like Midjourney, DALL-E and Stable Diffusion allow people to sit at their desk or phone and create realistic photo images by using a text prompt to describe the scene and image the user would like to create.
“It is as easy as a few steps. I can do it in 15 minutes,” said Lawrence, the author of “Hidden in White Sight: How AI Empowers and Deepens Systemic Racism,” which explores how this kind of technology can be used to reinforce prejudices and stereotypes.
Getty Images is one of several photo-curation companies that have taken legal action against AI companies this year. In a lawsuit filed in February, Getty said that Stable Diffusion had copied more than 12 million photographs from Getty Images’ collection, along with the associated captions and metadata, without permission from or compensation to Getty Images.
Getty called it a “brazen infringement of Getty Images’ intellectual property on a staggering scale,” and claimed that Stable Diffusion is effectively trying to start a competing business.
King III said the family has reached out and requested that the images be taken down.
“But I don’t know how far we will get,” he said. “This is a gray area. The reality is, we may be able to put guardrails in place in the United States. But, unless we can get guardrails around the planet, meaning all countries agree, then we’re still in trouble.”
As recently as July 28, Gabriel posted an image of King and Trump hugging and laughing. Trump’s left hand is resting on King’s shoulder as the former president pulls the civil rights leader close to him.
The caption read: “No President has ever done more for Black Americans than Donald Trump. Dr. King would AGREE with me!”
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