- A TV network’s founder has said he’s not sure a recent “Trump” interview was really him.
- In a phone-in on Real America’s Voice, the caller sounded glitchy and stilted.
- Trump’s Truth Social account shared clips from the interview, though, and the interviewer is sure it was real.
The founder of a pro-Trump news network said “an internal investigation will be needed” to see whether its hosts were duped into interviewing an AI instead of the real former President Donald Trump, The Daily Beast reported.
Real America’s Voice streamed the audio-only interview on Thursday, with hosts John Solomon and Amanda Head.
It saw “Trump” repeating familiar talking points —casting President Joe Biden corrupt and saying the court cases against him are a “whole big conspiracy.”
However, the voice is glitchy-sounding, with several breaks in the audio.
On Rumble, the video platform where the full interview is still online, numerous commenters immediately expressed doubt.
“Doesn’t sound like my President ??????” wrote one. “That sounds nothing like Trump. he is slurring his words. cadence is wrong. Diction is wrong. Tone is wrong,” said another.
Another wrote: “his cadence is off it sounds like AI.”
The network’s founder Robert J Sigg agreed. When reached by The Daily Beast, he said it sounds “like ChatGOP,” a pun on the OpenAI chatbot ChatGPT. He then said the network needed to investigate if the interview was real.
Solomon insisted the interview was real, saying that he set it up with Trump’s staff. Trump has given plenty of genuine phone-in interviews over the years, and increasingly favors smaller outlets which offer him uncritical support.
Solomon said he discussed topics in advance with Trump’s team and called them at the “right” place.
“It’s not AI, it was President Trump,” he told The Daily Beast. “You can call the staff and check with them yourself. It was definitely President Trump without any doubt.”
A representative for Trump did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment, sent outside of working hours. As of early Friday, Trump staffers appeared not to have commented on the veracity of the interview anywhere in public.
However, on Truth Social, the former president’s account shared a short clip.
Real America’s Voice is a right-leaning streaming, cable and satellite channel that has pushed talking points from the QAnon conspiracy theory and false claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 election.
Multiple AI Trump impersonators are available online, and a digital simulation of his voice has been used before.
In July, a super PAC supporting Gov. Ron DeSantis’ presidential campaign confirmed to Insider that it had used “technology” to mimic the former president’s voice in an ad, giving voice to words he had published on Truth Social.
Representatives for Real America’s Voice and its owner, Performance One Media LLC, did not immediately respond to Insider’s out-of-hours requests for comment.
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