Could the Emily Hart AI hoax change the internet forever?

For years, we've been dreading the day that AI-generated images and deepfakes become indistinguishable from real content. The Emily Hart controversy suggests that day has finally arrived, at least for certain MAGA supporters.

But what does that mean for human influencers?

For those who missed the news, Emily Hart presented herself on platforms like Fanvue, Instagram and Facebook as a pro-gun, anti-woke, Donald Trump-voting nurse who liked to post images of herself wearing MAGA caps and US flag bikinis. Perhaps that alone should have been a red flag, but she amassed thousands of followers and reportedly made several thousand dollars a month through subscriptions and merchandise.

Only Emily didn't exist. The images and captions were generated using AI by a 22-year-old male medical student from India called Sam. The accounts was eventually taken down for misleading activity, but, as revealed by EJ Dickson for Wired, Sam claims to have made enough money to fund his studies.

Sam says he first experimented with more generic influencer-style content before he discovered that targeting MAGA supporters gained him more visibility and engagement, with some posts getting millions of views. He believes that's because “The MAGA crowd is made up of super dumb people. And they fall for it.”

This realisation led Sam to lean into Republican propaganda and anti-immigration messages despite him having no political inclination towards Donald Trump. It was purely a grift – and one the US president might admire considering Trump's own peddling of NFT trading cards.

Emily Hart now presents a problem for non-AI influencers. The scam's received so much coverage that it should make people think twice before they fall for the next gun-loving, beer-swilling blonde who likes ice fishing – or anyone else for that matter.

That could lead to a situation where people only trust influencers who are already actually famous, or who have a recognised presence offline. Anyone else could be fake.

Or do people not even care? There are plenty of people who knowingly follow so-called AI-influencers and don't seem to see that as sad. Would Emily's fans have stuck by her after she was outed as AI?