AI character 'Amelia' designed to prevent extremism 'taken over' by the far-right
Amelia started her life as part of a counter-terror video game funded by the Home Office before being hijacked
The far-right has a new 'icon' in the form of a purple-haired British schoolgirl who was generated by AI.
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Amelia started her life as part of a counter-terror video game funded by the Home Office to deter young people from being attracted to far-right extremism in Yorkshire.
The game, Pathways: Navigating the Internet and Extremism, is a simple game where its players go on a journey through college.
They will make decisions such as whether or not to download potentially extremist content or to join Amelia at a rally protesting against the erosion of British values.
Certain choices can see the player's character referred to the Prevent counter-terrorism programme.
She has now reportedly been adopted by the far-right, which is creating memes of her, saying things like "My name is Amelia, and I care about my country.
"I am not afraid to speak out against the problems of immigration.
"Amelia is not just a name, it's a movement."
Internet users might encounter videos of her walking through the House of Commons and declaring her love for London, whilst also decrying "militant Muslims" and 'third world migrants'.
Will Guyatt, LBC's technology correspondent, told Andrew Marr: "This character has essentially been taken over, and it's staggering how quickly this has proliferated across the Internet.
"People are now rapidly generating this character, putting it into AI videos, putting it into all kinds of right-wing tropes, you know, challenging about pork sausages and all sorts of things with racist stereotypes."
Analysis provided to the Guardian by Peryton Intelligence, a UK company that monitors disinformation, shows an anonymous account known for far-right posts started sharing Amelia as a meme on X on January 9.
That post has been viewed more than 1.4 million times.
The number of posts about Amelia has risen from an average of 500 per day to approximately 10,000, as of January 15.
Will added: "It is worrying, but I think we may be at a stage where this stuff is proliferating so heavily on the Internet that that has to be given some consideration.
"It's not just X, that's not the only platform where this stuff proliferates."
There is now an Amelia cryptocurrency, which has been retweeted by Elon Musk.
Matteo Bergamini, the founder and CEO of Shout Out UK, a political and media literacy training company that created the original game, told the Guardian in response: “What we’re seeing is the monetisation of hate.”
The tech billionaire has also shared Amelia memes about England and being a native of the country.
Will added: "When the boss of that platform is retweeting an account, using a meme and promoting a cryptocurrency, thereby hopefully making people money on the back of this, we're in a very, very strange place when it comes to attitudes and how our social networks are being used."
The Home Office told the Guardian that Prevent had diverted nearly 6,000 people away from violent ideologies.
It added that projects such as the Pathways game were designed to target local radicalisation risks and were creazted and delivered independently of government.