Ross: Political rallies’ crowd size, who’s faking it and who’s complaining about it

I was watching the closing ceremony for the Olympics — feeling all sentimental seeing the world’s top athletes in that Kumbaya embrace before a packed stadium – and then I looked down at my phone and read the headline: “Trump falsely accuses Harris campaign of fabricated AI crowd photos.”

And it just ruins the moment. Are we really back to crowd size?

Of course, the problem is most of us only experience crowds through media coverage TV, so how does anyone know for sure it’s not some kind of AI special effect?

Take the closing ceremonies: What are the chances that Tom Cruise really rappelled into that stadium, picked up the Olympic flag, stuck it on the back of his motorcycle, rode it onto a cargo plane, flew to LA, skydived onto the Hollywood sign and added three more O’s to mimic the Olympic Rings?

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I know he does all his own stunts, but Paris-to-Hollywood in seven minutes? Come on! It would take at least an hour.

But it’s entertainment, and everybody loves it, so it doesn’t bother me. Faking crowd size for political gain, however, would be election tampering and it needs to stop.

So to get to the bottom of this, I typed in the question: “Has Kamala Harris used AI to make her crowds look bigger?” and sent it to ChatGPT. It consulted the entire internet, and in a split second answered (quote): “As of now, there’s no verified information supporting this claim.”

But Dave, you say, you’re asking AI to rat on itself! Of course, ChatGPT would say that. Fair enough.

So I’ll simply go with my perception, having watched these rallies on C-SPAN which I’m pretty sure has no budget for AI effects. And my perception is that Kamala Harris has had big crowds, and Trump has had big crowds.

But Trump is the only one complaining about his opponent’s big crowds, which sounds like he’s feeling insecure.

Plus, I also read that his advisers have been urging him to come up with some new speech material (besides just mispronouncing his opponent’s name) which I don’t think they’d be doing if they were satisfied with the crowds.

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And there’s no shame in that. Sure, Harris has a little more sparkle right now, but if Seinfeld could reinvigorate his career with a Pop-Tart movie, so can Trump.

As for getting accurate crowd-size comparisons, the only solution I see is to have impartial crowd-size referees assigned to each political event, who would employ the latest technology — be it drones, satellites or space lasers to gather an accurate head count — because as with every human endeavor, collecting more data is what will save us.

Then again, you’d probably need AI to crunch it all, and then we’re right back where we started. But welcome to life in the future.

Listen to “Seattle’s Morning News” with Dave Ross and Colleen O’Brien weekday mornings from 5-9 a.m. on KIRO Newsradio, 97.3 FM. Subscribe to the podcast here.

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