Last week, civil rights attorney Nekima Levy Armstrong was arrested after participating in a protest at a church in St. Paul, Minnesota, where the pastor had reportedly been working with ICE. The White House shared an image of Levy Armstrong following the arrest that appeared to show her crying.But the image is fake, apparently altered with AI to make her look like she was distressed or regretful. Wich raises an interesting new question: What can you do if the world’s most powerful government is arresting you on trumped-up charges and then sharing fake photos of you? Do you have any recourse at all?
Nekima Levy Armstrong and Chauntyll Allen, a St. Paul school board member, were arrested Jan. 23 for violating the FACE Act, which prohibits attempts to intimidate, threaten, or interfere with services at places of worship. Video of the arrest captured by Levy Armstrong’s husband shows agents not just recording her but assuring her that the footage wouldn’t be used on social media.
“Why are you recording?” levy armstrong asked in the 7-minute video. “I would ask that you not record.”
“It’s not going to be on Twitter,” the unidentified agent told her. “It’s not going to be on anything like that.”
But it was posted to Twitter, now known as X. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem posted an image showing Levy Armstrong with a relatively neutral expression-confident and stoic. But the X account for the White House posted something diffrent. That account showed Levy Armstrong crying, with tears rolling down her face. It was most likely created with AI.Her lawyer, Jordan Kushner, told the Associated Press that it was defamation.
“It is indeed just so outrageous that the White House would make up stories about someone to try and discredit them,” Kushner said. “She was wholly calm and composed and rational.There was no one crying. So this is just outrageous defamation.”
Gizmodo spoke to experts to get a better sense of what Levy Armstrong could do after such an egregious move by the White House. And the consensus seems to be that any attempt to get justice will be complex.
Eric Goldman,a law professor at Santa Clara University School of Law,pointed out that the government has been trying to crack down on malicious uses of AI to misrepresent people,yet the White House turns around and does just that,”role modeling the worst behavior that it’s trying to prevent its citizens from engaging in.”
“It’s so shocking to see the government put out a deliberately false image without claiming that they were manipulating the image. This is what we call government propaganda,” said Goldman.
Goldman says that there are several layers to a defamation claim that Levy Armstrong would need to establish to be successful.
“She’d have to show that there was a false statement of fact. And normally we treat photos as conclusive statements of fact, that they’re truthful for what they depicted, but it wouldn’t surprise me if the government argued that it was a parody or that it was so obviously false that everyone knew it was false and thus it was not a statement of fact,” said goldman.
“Now, that’s just sophistry, right? If defamation law means anything, it would apply to a fictionalized photo that is presented as truthful. Like, that’s what it’s su
