Hundreds of Fake Pro-Trump Avatars Emerge on Social Media [View all]

Source: NYT

In the months leading up to the midterm elections, hundreds of accounts have emerged on social media featuring A.I.-generated pro-Trump influencers posting at a rapid pace about the “radical left” and “America First.” They tend to appear as ordinary — if very good-looking — men and women, gazing flirtatiously at the camera while pontificating about the war in Iran, abortion or Bad Bunny.

President Trump has reposted content from at least one of the accounts — a platinum blond avatar making unfounded claims about California’s governor.

The New York Times began tracking MAGA-boosting, A.I.-generated TikTok posts in January and discovered at least 304 accounts sharing the content, some of which have since disappeared. Researchers with the Governance and Responsible A.I. Lab at Purdue University, known as GRAIL, found another dozen accounts across TikTok, Instagram and Facebook. Eric Nelson, a special investigations analyst from Alethea, a digital threat mitigation company, identified another nine accounts on YouTube.

Several accounts have already amassed more than 35,000 followers. Some of the posts have more than half a million views. The accounts reviewed by The Times were not identified as A.I.-generated.

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Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/17/business/media/artificial-intelligence-trump-social-media.html

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The first three paragraphs of the story quote one line these fake influencers have been reciting: "If you support Trump, you just made a friend." The screenshots above the article show 10 of these fake influencers reciting another pro-Trump line.

An expert on how AI can be used told the Times the fake influencers are trying to "give an illusion of consensus" and "a false sense of a majority opinion."