Far-right groups weaponize AI-generated content across Europe
Far-right parties and activists across Europe have weaponized generative AI to create and spread synthetic images designed to stoke anti-immigration fears, target political leaders, and spread conspiracy theories and Islamophobic content. The practice accelerated following the 2024 European parliamentary elections and prompted Meta's oversight board to investigate anti-immigration content on Facebook.
What happened
Far-right parties and activists across western Europe have deployed AI-generated images in political campaigns, beginning with the 2024 European parliamentary elections and continuing to proliferate since.
Posts include fake images designed to stoke fears of an immigrant "invasion," demonization campaigns targeting leaders such as Emmanuel Macron, Italian far-right deployment of images of women and children eating insects to bolster conspiracy theories about a "global elite," Irish far-right images of a police officer stamping on Ireland's flag, and Islamophobic memes following the Southport knife murders in the UK.
The images typically lack watermarking or identifiers, and experts note the same models, themes, and packaging approaches have created a common aesthetic across borders in the EU and Britain.
Reported impact
The wave of AI-made right-wing content on social media networks has proliferated significantly since the European parliamentary elections.
Index analysis
Experts say the ease of use of generative AI models appeals to political fringe groups with a "pragmatic opportunism" toward new technology and fewer moral concerns about AI imagery compared to mainstream political parties.
Governance controls
Meta's independent oversight board opened an investigation this month into anti-immigration content on Facebook, examining a post from a German account featuring an AI-generated image with anti-immigrant rhetoric.
Classification
Sources and evidence
This record was researched and written by the Index, based on the following original reporting.