Barack Obama has delivered a scathing rebuke of Donald Trump's use of artificial intelligence to deploy racist attacks against his family.
In a wide-ranging interview published on Monday, 4 May 2026, the former President toldThe New Yorkerthat a viral video depicting him andMichelle Obama as apesrepresented a dangerous new low in political discourse.
Trump, 79, shared the video on his social media platform Truth Social in February, using artificial intelligence to superimpose the faces of Barack and Michelle, 62, onto the bodies of apes.
The clip was removed after an outcry, but the White House brushed off criticism at the time, with press secretary Karoline Leavitt dismissing it as 'fake outrage.' The incident fed into a longer-running battle over Trump's use of inflammatory and race-tinged content online, as well as the broader unease about how AI tools can be deployed in political attacks.
In the interview, Obama, 64, tried to separate the personal insult from what he sees as a more 'troubling pattern'. He said he was used to being a target, but drew a clear boundary when it came to his wife and their daughters, Malia, 27, and Sasha, 24.
'I don't take it personally,' he said, before adding that the family element is different. 'I'm always offended when my wife and kids get dragged into things, because they didn't choose this. . . . That's a line that even people whose politics I deeply reject, I would expect them to care about.'
He went on to stress that he would not respond in kind. 'I would never talk about somebody's family in that way,' he told the magazine.
Barack Obama's criticism did not dwell for long on the racist imagery itself. He was notably more focused on what he views as Trump's casual use of AI-generated videos to trivialise serious issues.
According to the former president, the Truth Social post was part of a growing stream of AI content shared by Trump, including clips that, in Obama's description, appear to treat war 'like a video game' and others that show 'excrement dumped on ordinary citizens.'
Without adopting the high-minded neutrality that politicians often favour, Obama made it clear he finds this behaviour disturbing rather than merely tasteless.
Source: International Business Times UK
