Online content creators are not just building fake images and videos of prominent public figures, they are also fabricating people and using them in military contexts, which can make them money and even serve as effective propaganda, according to artificial intelligence researchers.<\/p>\n
Some of these online avatars are sexualized images of women wearing camouflage garb that have generated a significant audience and helped create an idealized image of political figures like Donald Trump, even if the viewer knows the content is not real, according to experts.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are blending the lines between political cartoons and reality,\u201d said Daniel Schiff, an assistant professor of technology policy at Purdue University and co-director of the Governance and Responsible AI Lab<\/a> (Grail). \u201cA lot of people feel like these images or videos or the stories they convey, feel true.\u201d<\/p>\n The amount of political deepfakes has increased dramatically in recent years, according to a Grail database<\/a>. Since the start of 2025, the organization has catalogued more than 1,000 English language social media posts featuring fake images or videos of prominent political figures and politically important social issues and events.<\/p>\n In the previous eight years combined, the organization recorded 1,344 such incidents.<\/p>\n That uptick is largely because generative AI technology has improved, which has allowed people to quickly create such content, Schiff said.<\/p>\n We have made it \u201ctrivially easy to generate a scene that looks pretty realistic and to place real individuals into scenes\u201d, said Sam Gregory, executive director of Witness, an organization dedicated to human rights and combating deceptive AI.<\/p>\n But the fake avatars \u2013 which mimic real ordinary people rather than known figures \u2013 are a different matter again.<\/p>\n AI women in uniform, Trump and … feet photos?<\/p>\n In December 2025, an account for Jessica Foster, an AI-generated blond woman often in US military uniform, went live on Instagram and started sharing photos of Foster atop a bunk bed in barracks; sitting in an office chair with her feet on a desk; and walking a tarmac in high heels beside Trump, according to Fast Company<\/a>.<\/p>\n The creators intentionally used that footwear and had her feet appear prominently.<\/p>\n The images of Foster, who is not an actual person, drew more than 1 million followers on Instagram. The posts were then linked to an account on OnlyFans, a platform largely used by pornography creators, where visitors could buy foot photos supposedly from Foster.<\/p>\n \u201cWhy do you NEVER reply?\u201d a user asked the Foster profile on Instagram, according to the Washington Post<\/a>.<\/p>\n The account<\/a> has been removed in recent days.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of the AI-generation is to basically get clicks and money or to drive people to a more lucrative place,\u201d Gregory said.<\/p>\n But such tools can also serve a political purpose. During the war in Iran, a flood of videos have appeared on social media featuring fake female Iranian soldiers who say: \u201cHabibi, come to Iran,\u201d the BBC reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n One of the giveaways was that Iran prohibits women from serving in combat roles.<\/p>\n Creators also built an AI-generated female police officer that has more than 26,000 followers on TikTok. A video<\/a> features it smiling with the text: \u201cPresident Trump deported over 2.5 million people out of the country. Is this what you voted for? Yes.\u201d<\/p>\n It got more than 200 likes and 23 comments, including: \u201cabsolutely yes.\u201d<\/p>\n During the 2024 election, Trump also shared AI-generated images that depicted Taylor Swift fans<\/a> supporting him. Since 2024, Trump and the White House have shared at least 18 deepfakes on social media, according to the Grail database.<\/p>\n But the issue is not limited to the right. California governor Gavin Newsom, who many predict will run for president in 2028, has also started sharing deepfakes aimed at Trump, including one<\/a> that shows the president smiling at a hologram of Jeffrey Epstein.<\/p>\n The AI researchers said political deepfakes can still be persuasive even if consumers know they aren\u2019t real.<\/p>\n Foster is \u201cwalking in high heels, in a military uniform, her military badge is completely wrong. There is no reason she would be hanging out with President Trump and Nicol\u00e1s Maduro\u201d, Gregory said. \u201cNone of this, if you think about it, makes much sense or bears up to scrutiny. But people aren\u2019t necessarily looking for things that are real; they are looking for things that represent their beliefs.\u201d<\/p>\n The deepfakes then make it less likely that people will reconsider those beliefs, said Valerie Wirtschafter, a Brookings Institution fellow in its artificial intelligence and emerging technology initiative.<\/p>\n The deepfakes are \u201cjust another layer added on in terms of this process of reinforcing, rather than revisiting, what people believe is true\u201d, said Wirtschafter.<\/p>\n \u2018It\u2019s sort of like a troll farm\u2019<\/p>\n The researchers worry that things will only get worse. The technology used to build Foster could also be used to produce what researchers described as \u201cAI swarms\u201d, capable of \u201ccoordinating autonomously, infiltrating communities, and fabricating consensus efficiently\u201d, according to a recent study<\/a> in Science.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s sort of like a troll farm without actually having to have people any more,\u201d Wirtschafter said.<\/p>\n But humans can still stop malicious actors from using AI to destabilize society, the researchers said.<\/p>\n The Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity<\/a> has developed a \u201ctechnical standard for publishers, creators and consumers to establish the origin and edits of digital content\u201d, according to the group.<\/p>\n It\u2019s \u201cembedded in a photo you take on a camera or piece of content created with an AI tool or edited with an AI tool, and then distributed on a platform, so it\u2019s meant to be a set of cryptographically signed metadata\u201d, Gregory said.<\/p>\n The technology companies then need to use that information to label whether the content included AI, Gregory said.<\/p>\n LinkedIn, Pinterest, TikTok and YouTube have all committed to labelling AI-generated content. But an investigator with the Indicator<\/a>, a media outlet, recently posted 200 AI-generated images and videos on those platforms to determine if they actually marked them. He found that the most diligent ones \u2013 LinkedIn and Pinterest \u2013 still only labelled 67% of that content; Instagram labelled just 15 of 105 fake images.<\/p>\n