A MAGA influencer who racked up millions of fans on Instagram with her patriotic content – often posing in a bikini while ice fishing, drinking Coors Light beer and shooting guns – has been unmasked: as an Indian man who put himself through medical school with the proceeds.
“Sam”, a 22-year-old orthopaedic surgeon in training, told WIRED that he got the idea to sell AI-generated images of a young woman in a bikini while scrounging money for school – and trying to save up enough to emigrate to the US after graduation, The New York Post reported.
He turned to Google’s Gemini AI for advice and decided to create a “hot girl” crafted specifically for the “MAGA/conservative niche”, after the software told him that “the consecutive audience (especially men in the US) often has higher disposable income and is more loyal”, according to WIRED.
And that’s how Emily Hart was born.
According to her profile, Hart was a registered nurse whose content was geared toward conservative men.
One post showed her firing a rifle with the caption: “If you want a reason to unfollow: Christ is king, abortion is murder, and all illegals must be deported”. Another caption read: “POV (point of view): You were assigned intelligent at birth, but you identify as liberal.”
“Every day I’d write something pro-Christian, pro-Second Amendment, pro-life, anti-abortion, anti-woke, and anti-immigration,” Sam told WIRED.
The account “blew up”, and Hart had 10,000 followers within a month. Every reel posted garnered millions of views, bringing in more and more followers.
Sam then cashed in on the AI model’s appeal – selling MAGA-themed T-shirts and creating an account on the OnlyFans competitor Fanvue, where paid subscribers could access lewd AI-generated content of Hart.
Fanvue has differentiated itself from OnlyFans by allowing AI-generated content on its platform, WIRED reported.
Sam was soon raking in thousands of dollars month.
“I was spending maybe 30 to 50 minutes of my day, and I was making good money for a medical student,” Sam said.
“In India, even in professional jobs, you can’t make this amount of money. I haven’t seen any easier way to make money online.”
Brookings Institute fellow Valerie Wirtschafter, who is studying emerging tech and democracy, told the outlet that “AI has made (fake profiles) more believable, and there has perhaps been an amplification of it”.
The tech expert added that young MAGA women are “more attention-grabbing” since most 18- to 29-year-old women in America skew liberal (Democratic).
Sam also attempted to make a liberal counterpart for Hart on Instagram, he said, but “Democrats know that it’s AI slop, so they don’t engage as much”.
“The MAGA crowd is made up of dumb people – like, super dumb people. And they fall for it,” he said.
Sam used Grok AI to generate nude photos of Hart and uploaded them to Fanvue, where fans sent him money for exclusive content and messages.
“I was basically doing nothing,” he said. “And it was just flooded with money.”
Hart’s profile was removed from Instagram in February for “fraudulent” activity, WIRED reported, given the platform requires creators to disclose whether their content is AI-generated.
A Facebook account that WIRED said remained online has also now been taken down since the story about Sam’s scheme was published.
The medical student said he would have stopped posting content of Hart anyway.
“I don’t feel like I was scamming people,” he said.
This story was originally published by The New York Post and was reproduced with permission
