I reported on the far-right's new AI mascot 'Amelia' - the response shows just how toxic social media has become

Hey Amelia - why can’t we be friends?

I’ve worked here a long time, and love working for the best team in radio.  I’ve got decades of experience as a journalist and also advising the world’s largest tech and media organisations.  I don't expect you to agree with everything I say - that's the whole point of my work - but I have considerable experience in what I'm discussing.

I’ve been doing this for years - I regularly crop up on podcasts or TV elsewhere, and I write too. I've never wanted to go viral - and would rather not have done so this week.

A routine four-minute chat at the end of Andrew Marr’s LBC show on Monday about the interesting story of an AI-created character called Amelia created to stop extremism becoming the digital doyenne of those on the right was meant to be a quick explainer - but quickly transformed into something else.

I woke up on Tuesday morning to X posts from hundreds of random accounts, nearly all using pictures of 19th-century English lords or video game characters as their profile pictures - often generating masculine AI pictures of their idols, Elon Musk and Donald Trump as their profile backgrounds and yielding one of X’s costly blue ticks, which used to mean authenticity.   Each to their own, I guess.  Accounts with names similar to @disgruntledoftooting or @bulldogreg64 all took to the platform to challenge my interview with Andrew and perception of Amelia. I’m here for debate and robust conversation every day - I’ve built my work on it.

A whole group of people on X who haven’t previously been aware of my excellence are now apparently very aware of me and want to tell their friends about my life. They revealed bits of information like I’d previously worked for Facebook or occasionally appear on ITV’s This Morning as if they were citizen journalists revealing state secrets at great risk.

Regardless of your opinion of my conversation with Andrew, Amelia has become a meme favoured by those on the right - a term I use in a purely descriptive fashion.  Live radio is conversational and not scripted - but I stand by the content of this conversation. I own my words and opinions.

For most, it wasn’t about challenging my opinion - it was about abusing and tormenting for engagement, sharing the video shared by LBC, making their own edited versions using our likenesses, before making a number of comments about me - not my work.

Such is the cesspit of X with accounts shilling for engagement and looking for follows from like-minded individuals - I’ve had my parentage questioned, guesses of my sexual preferences, suggestions that I have my computer investigated for being a child abuser and messy hair (shock horror) and the fact I needed to lose weight (oh - I didn’t know…).  Others sent the video to Elon Musk in the hope their hero would engage with them.

I’d never stop anybody from speaking their mind - but when did the quality of discussion deteriorate from “I disagree with your view and here’s why” to “You’re fat and you abuse kids”?  I’m not sure whether larger issues than X are at play, but it’s particularly prevalent on that platform.

Having a thousand or so faceless voices telling you that you’re rubbish or don’t meet their body standards is draining - even when they don’t have the kahunas to reveal themselves online. That said, I equally delight in being able to live free in the heads of those behind these accounts, whether they live here in the UK or not.

You won't stop me from using the platform - covering the good and calling out the bad. The Elon Musk beat is equally incredible and challenging - sometimes simultaneously. For every Neuralink there's a Mecha Hitler, and for every Space X there's an unsolicited image of a woman in a clingfilm bikini.

So, Amelia - let’s be friends. I like your hair, and as many of your supporters have pointed out, I clearly love fish and chips.

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Will Guyatt is Technology Correspondent for LBC.

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