Med Student Made Thousands Scamming MAGA Fans With A Fake AI Influencer

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What to Know

01 A med student in India who was looking to make more money found he could do so through an AI-generated "MAGA girl."
02 He created accounts for "Emily Hart," who regularly shared common conservative views on social media.
03 People can't stop talking about how he managed to trick MAGA men into giving him money.

Another popular MAGA social media influencer has proved to be… not real. And people can’t stop talking about it. On April 21, Wired published a story about a 22-year-old medical student in India who needed to make some extra money. With the help of an AI chatbot, he discovered a surprisingly easy and lucrative way to do so: by creating an AI-generated MAGA influencer to lure men into spending money.

According to the article, the student, identified as “Sam,” created social media accounts for Emily Hart, an AI-generated blonde woman who likes ice fishing, drinking beer, and, of course, making fun of liberals. And, yes, the scam really did work. Sam’s fake MAGA influencer quickly garnered millions of views and thousands of followers.

An AI chatbot reportedly told him MAGA would be a good target for this.

At first, when Sam came up with this idea, presumably centered on using an attractive, AI-generated woman to trick gullible men, he wasn’t so successful. So, he asked the AI chatbot Gemini about what he was doing wrong. The chatbot allegedly told him that a beautiful AI-generated woman was far too “generic” to get a lot of attention on socials. It suggested trying something more niche, such as an attractive MAGA woman.

So, instead of merely creating an attractive woman, Sam created Emily, a registered nurse who wrote things like, “If you want a reason to unfollow: Christ is king, abortion is murder, and all illegals must be deported.” This change proved successful for him.

After succeeding in this endeavor, Sam tried to create a liberal version.

Apparently, the liberal version just didn’t take off in the way that the MAGA account did. He told Wired, “Democrats know that it’s AI slop, so they don’t engage as much.” He also had a theory about why conservatives were more likely to engage with this kind of content. “The MAGA crowd is made up of dumb people—like, super dumb people. And they fall for it,” he said.

They fell for it to the point that he managed to make thousands off of it. He told the publication that he spent about 30 to 50 minutes per day working on the “pro-Christian, pro-Second Amendment, pro-life, anti-abortion, anti-woke, and anti-immigration” content, and he made “good money” doing it.

However, the scam didn’t last super long. Instagram banned Emily’s account, and Sam’s priorities shifted anyway. He wanted to focus on school instead.

Reactions to this scam have been mixed.

Of course, there are plenty of people who find this story problematic for a variety of reasons, such as using women’s bodies for profit (even if AI-generated) or spreading MAGA ideology for personal gain But many others were also amused by the story and not all that offended by it.

On X, one person joked, “Finally, an ethical use of AI: scamming a bunch of racists to pay for your medical degree.” Someone else said, “The liberal version not working is the funniest part of the whole story and nobody’s going to want to talk about it.”

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Paige Sheffield (she/her)