Trump's $499 gold phone exposed over alleged fake AI flag imagery

The Trump Mobile T1 has barely begun shipping and it is already embroiled in yet another controversy - This time, over what appears to be an AI-generated American flag on the phone's own promotional material.

The trouble has been building for some time. Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. pushed out a video on Wednesday announcing that customers who had placed $100 deposits would finally begin receiving their T1 phones, with shipments supposedly starting 'this week'.

The announcement came after a string of missed deadlines, from August last year through to October and then May, fuelling persistent doubts about whether the phone was in development at all.

Then, the company quietly updated its terms of use shortly before announcing shipments, stating that a $100 deposit does 'not guarantee' the device will ever be manufactured or delivered. Instead, the payment was a 'conditional opportunity' to purchase the phone if and when the company decides to sell it.

Now, after watching the new promotional clips, viewers were quick to notice something strange with the American flag on the back of the gold smartphone.

The US flag officially has 13 stripes, representing the 13 colonies that declared independence from Great Britain. But in the video, the Trump Mobile version appears to have 11 and at another point, it drops to nine.

According to The Verge, the shifting stripe count is almost certainly the result of AI-generated imagery.

Separately, one clip appears to show a scratch around the camera module, suggesting that some filming was done with a real device rather than a fully computer-generated render. If this is the case, it's interesting that the same care wasn't taken for the flag design.

Meanwhile, the patriotic branding has been central to the T1's pitch from the beginning, with it being marketed at 'MADE IN AMERICA.'

However, it seems the message has shifted to a softer, 'designed with American values in mind,' hinting that the Trump-branded device will be manufactured outside the US.

Already, tech experts found the T1's specifications to be almost identical to the REVVL 7 Pro 5G, a standard Android smartphone made in China.

As more details are shed about the device, more questions are being raised.

Some users have described the project as a scam, and last year, Shark Tank's Mark Cuban suggested the phone may be nothing more than a vehicle to promote Trump's $TRUMP meme coin.

We'll only get a clearer picture and first proper look at the device once the products are shipped.