The left has been outraged at an AI-generated picture of President Donald Trump dressed up as the Pope that was circulated after Pope Francis died last week and the College of Cardinals gets ready to meet to select a new one.

Trump responded to the backlash over the photo on Monday in the Oval Office, telling reporters that it was a "joke" and that the outrage was coming from the "fake news media."

“They can’t take a joke,” he said. “The Catholics loved it."

The image was shared on the White House X account on Friday after it was shared online.

Disrespectful

Some priests felt it was disrespectful.

“I think it was a bad joke that obviously landed very poorly and was seen as offensive by a lot of Catholics, and I wish he hadn’t done it,” Bishop Robert Barron told EWTN.

“I hope he didn’t have anything to do with that,” Archbishop of New York Timothy Cardinal Dolan, a friend of Trump's, told reporters in Rome on Sunday. “It wasn’t good.”

Trump made it clear he didn't have anything to do with the photo, other than posting it.

“Somebody made up a picture of me dressed like the pope, and they put it out on the internet. That’s not me that did it. I have no idea where it came from,” he claimed.

"No laughing matter"

But Trump-haters have used it to characterize Trump as ego-maniacal or power-hungry.

Reuters cited experts who said AI was being used to seek power and that it was "no laughing matter."

“I think we are seeing a new phenomenon – the merging of social media and AI power, organized for political power and narrative dominance,” Director of the AI-Media Strategies Lab at Northeastern University in Boston, John Wihbey, said.

Wihbey said Trump was "exploiting" AI, even though Trump made it clear it didn't come from him and was for humor only.

“Trump's policies are unpopular, and his presidency is unpopular," Texas A&M Professor of Presidential Rhetoric Jennifer Mercieca said. “Within this context, Trump has created a visual fantasy of himself as a hero, attempting to persuade the nation (and the world) that he is, in fact, a hero.”

With the left hell-bent on turning anything Trump says or does into some sort of attack on democracy, it's clear that they will find something wrong with whatever he chooses to do. Even if it's nothing more than a joke.