AI, Drumcree and the Danger of Rewriting Reality in a Divided Society

This is not about taking sides on Drumcree. It is about something that should concern people on every side: whether the images being used to influence public opinion are real.

Northern Ireland is already dealing with an extremely sensitive and emotionally charged dispute in Portadown. At moments like this, accuracy matters.

That is why questions surrounding an image shared by TUV deputy leader Ron McDowell deserve serious attention — not because of which political tradition he represents, but because of what the increasing use of artificial intelligence could mean for political debate.

The Irish News and many social media posts on X reported on Wednesday morning that an image posted by Mr McDowell following Tuesday night’s rally in Portadown appears to have been altered using AI in a way that makes the crowd look substantially larger. The newspaper reported that around 200 people attended the gathering in a car park at the end of the Garvaghy Road.

The social-media post accompanying the image said Mr McDowell had been proud to share the stage with the Portadown District, Jamie Bryson and Carla Lockhart, adding that those involved had received the response they “deserved from the crowd”.

The question, therefore, is not simply whether somebody used an AI tool.

It is what happens when an apparently documentary photograph accompanying a political message no longer accurately represents the event it claims to show.

Why crowd size matters

A crowd photograph isn’t just decoration.

In politics, images of packed streets, rallies and demonstrations communicate something powerful without requiring a single statistic.

They tell viewers: look how many people agree with us.

That can create an impression of momentum, popularity and public support. Making a crowd appear substantially larger than it actually was can therefore change the meaning of an image.

If AI has been used to expand Tuesday night’s crowd, the difference isn’t comparable to brightening a dark photograph, cropping an image or sharpening it.

It potentially changes an important fact about what happened.

The Irish News reported that its verification process indicated the material had been generated using OpenAI tools, while describing the photograph cautiously as one that “appears” to exaggerate the crowd.

That distinction is important. Until the circumstances of how the image was created or edited are fully established, claims about who altered it, why they did so or whether the person posting it knew it had been altered should not be presented as fact.

This goes far beyond Drumcree

There is a much bigger issue here.

AI can now create a convincing crowd that never existed, add people to a demonstration, remove people from a photograph or manufacture an apparently historic moment within seconds.

And recent examples demonstrate that this isn’t theoretical.

Fact-checkers have already identified AI-generated videos falsely depicting huge political demonstrations in Manchester and London. In those cases, technical markers and visual anomalies showed that the supposed mass gatherings were artificial.

The danger is obvious.

Imagine the same technology being used during an election, a riot, a contentious parade, a public disorder incident or an international crisis.

A fabricated photograph could circulate to hundreds of thousands of people before journalists, police or fact-checkers have established what actually happened.

By then, the correction may never reach everyone who saw the original.

Northern Ireland has an additional reason to be careful

This matters particularly in a society where political and community disputes carry considerable historical baggage.

The Drumcree dispute was associated with some of the most serious public disorder of the 1990s and returned to the headlines this month after the Parades Commission permitted a tightly restricted parade of 35 people along the Garvaghy Road.

There are strongly held and fundamentally different views about that decision.

Those arguments can and should take place.

But artificial images should never become substitutes for evidence.

Whatever your view of the Orange Order, Garvaghy Road residents, unionist politicians, nationalist politicians, the police or the decisions of the Parades Commission, everyone benefits from knowing that when they are shown a photograph of an event, it actually depicts that event accurately.

Politicians are already using AI

There is another reason this debate cannot simply be dismissed as “AI on Facebook”.

Artificial intelligence is already part of political working life.

A Northern Ireland Assembly Freedom of Information response published in July confirmed that all MLAs have access to Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat, with the service available to approximately 1,460 people across MLAs, Assembly staff, constituency staff and party support staff. The Assembly also provides training covering AI’s limitations, risks and responsible use.

Published Assembly expense records also show that some individual MLAs have claimed ChatGPT subscriptions as constituency-office software expenses.

So we know some MLAs claim ChatGPT on expenses, though the records don’t suggest every politician does.

And there is nothing inherently improper about a politician using AI.

It can help summarise documents, research issues, organise information, draft correspondence and perform many of the same administrative tasks for which businesses across Northern Ireland now use it.

The issue is transparency and responsibility.

Using AI to help draft a letter is one thing.

Using AI-generated or AI-altered imagery in a political argument without clearly identifying it as such raises a very different set of questions.

What should the rules be?

Perhaps Northern Ireland now needs a wider conversation about political AI.

Should politicians clearly label an image when generative AI has materially altered it?

Should political parties have their own policies preventing synthetic photographs from being presented as documentary images?

Should politicians or their staff verify photographs before publishing them during contentious situations?

And where public money pays for AI subscriptions or software, should elected representatives have particular responsibilities around how those tools are used?

These questions aren’t about banning artificial intelligence.

AI is going to become more common, not less.

They are about maintaining a basic boundary between using technology to communicate information and using technology to change what appears to have happened.

The greatest damage may be to genuine photographs

There is also a less obvious danger.

As fake photographs become more convincing, real photographs become easier to dismiss.

Someone confronted with uncomfortable evidence can simply reply: “That’s AI.”

Researchers sometimes describe this as the “liar’s dividend”: once society knows that convincing synthetic media exists, the existence of deepfakes can itself provide cover for denying genuine material.

That could leave us in a situation where people no longer know whether to believe anything they see.

For journalism, democracy and public confidence, that would be a serious problem.

This isn’t a unionist or nationalist issue

The principle has to work both ways.

If an AI-enhanced photograph exaggerating attendance at a unionist demonstration is unacceptable, exactly the same standard should apply to an image exaggerating attendance at a nationalist, republican, Alliance, Labour, Conservative or any other political event.

Otherwise, this simply becomes another argument about whose side produced the image.

The more important question is whether it is real.

Northern Ireland has enough genuine disagreements without artificial intelligence creating thousands of imaginary participants to join them.

Political arguments will continue.

Drumcree will continue to provoke deeply different views.

But there should still be one piece of common ground: when politicians show the public what happened, the public should be able to trust that what they are looking at actually happened.

Read more: Drumcree Stand-Off Continues as Protesters Remain on Garvaghy Road | Drumcree Parade Can Go Ahead After Court of Appeal Overturns Ban | Drumcree: Whose Rights Count on the Garvaghy Road — and What Is This Dispute Costing Northern Ireland? | Drumcree: Rights, Respect — or Are We Still Fighting Yesterday’s Battles?