Melania Trump, the once and then-future first lady, published her memoir last year. Then, back in May, she announced that a version would be released in audiobook form, with the help of artificial intelligence.
“A NEW ERA IN PUBLISHING I am honored to bring you Melania – The AI Audiobook – narrated entirely using artificial intelligence in my own voice. Let the future of publishing begin,” the first lady wrote at the time on X.
A NEW ERA IN PUBLISHING
I am honored to bring you Melania – The AI Audiobook – narrated entirely using artificial intelligence in my own voice.Let the future of publishing begin.
Exclusively: https://t.co/xIfkkmL4YC pic.twitter.com/ab4Qb43AOC
— MELANIA TRUMP (@MELANIATRUMP) May 22, 2025
A new report shows that online sleuths have been asking questions about whether AI applications in Melania’s memoir project may not have ended with the audiobook.
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As surfaced by Indy 100, Redditors have been analyzing the book and flagging some passages that look like they might have been generated with the help of ChatGPT or another AI product. It’s been a topic of discussion on the ChatGPT subreddit going back to around the time the book was first published.
Jordan Klepper, in a Daily Show segment around the time of the memoir’s publication, had also made a similar implication. “That is a heartwarming moment that definitely wasn’t created by ChatGPT,” Klepper said on the show, also last October.
Melania opted for a high-tech twist pic.twitter.com/d2R7d7IyKH
— indy100 (@indy100) August 1, 2025
It’s not clear who, if anyone, might have been engaged as the ghostwriter on Melania’s book. In a New York Times discussion, around the time the book came out, writer Pamela Paul stated that “There’s no chance that Melania Trump wrote this, but we have no sign of who the ghostwriter is. I have an idea that it was written by someone who worked for a long time in fashion P.R. or marketing, maybe someone who spent some time writing captions for, like, Harper’s Bazaar magazine… that it was then read by a Trump loyalist who was like: Insert political statement here.”
The controversy recalled the moment, in 2016, when Melania’s speech at the Republican convention appeared to lift several phrases from a previous speech by Michelle Obama. Melania Trump addressed that in the book, claiming that her staff had “betrayed” her.
There is not, to be clear, any solid evidence, beyond theories online, that the first lady wrote her book using ChatGPT.
Photo courtesy of the Political Tribune media library.
