In some corners of the Internet, on specific news feeds and algorithms, an AI-generated British schoolgirl has emerged as a cultural phenomenon.
Her name is Amelia, a purple-haired “goth girl” who proudly carries a mini Union flag wherever she goes and appears to have a penchant for racism.
If you’re unfamiliar with Amelia, chances are you’ll soon see a viral meme or other memes inspired by her on Facebook or X, where her reputation is growing.
Amelia’s videos usually show her walking around London or the House of Commons, declaring her love for England and warning about the dangers of “militant Muslims” or “third world immigrants”. In one clip he is being scolded for eating pork sausages by a bearded man wearing Islamic garb.
The message is well-read on social media far and wide, but it’s Amelia’s AI invention that has made her extremely adaptable, creating a viral internet trend in which anyone with access to mainstream chatbots can participate.
At least it can be said that the origin of the character is ironic. The initial iteration of Amelia began life in an anti-extremism video game funded by the UK Home Office and created to prevent young people aged 13-18 from being attracted to far-right extremism in Yorkshire.
Ways: Navigating the Internet and Extremism Is a simple multiple choice format game with basic animation. Its players are taken on a journey as characters to a college. They are invited to make decisions in scenarios including downloading potentially extremist content or joining the Amelia character at a rally organized by “a small political group” against changes in society and “the decline of British values”.
Some options result in a referral under the British Government’s counter-terrorism programme.
However, it is a subversion of the Amelia character that has spread across social media channels in such a way that even the creators of the original game are surprised.
The plethora of increasingly sophisticated AI-generated iterations include a manga-style Amelia, a Wallace and Gromit version, and AI-generated “real life” encounters between her and Father Ted or Harry Potter characters, with racist language and far-right messages.
Analysis provided to the Guardian by Logically, a UK company that tracks disinformation, indicates that an anonymous account known for efficiently disseminating far-right messages started the Amelia meme with a post on X on January 9, which has since been viewed 1.4 million times.
The volume of “ameliaposting” has increased by an average of 500 per day since that account first introduced itself to the world, starting on January 15 when it reached an international audience. There were 11,137 posts on X alone on Wednesday.
In one of the most surreal twists, an Amelia cryptocurrency has emerged, with social media users trying to leverage its value on the meme’s rising profile. On Wednesday, Elon Musk retweeted an X account promoting the Amelia cryptocurrency token.
“What we’re seeing is the monetization of hate,” said Matteo Bergamini, founder and CEO of Shout Out UK, the political and media literacy training company that created the original game.
“We’ve seen Telegram groups sending messages to each other in Chinese about the meme coin and talking about how to artificially inflate its value, so a lot of money is being made.”
The company itself has been the target of a flood of hate mail, including death threats, which have now been reported to the police.
Bergamini explains that the original initiative was never meant to be a stand-alone game. Rather, it was intended for use in classrooms with a set of teaching resources, a fact he says has been ignored by coverage and commentary.
“Unfortunately there has been a lot of misrepresentation,” he said. For example, the game does not suggest that questioning mass migration is inherently wrong.
Others have suggested that the initiative has backfired, at least in part by presenting a “cute goth girl” as a negative character, causing her to inadvertently become the focus of admiration. But Bergamini said the game – which used feedback from focus groups with young people before production – continued to be used and feedback from schools and others was positive.
Still, the speed and sophistication of the creation of allegedly subversive Amelia memes online has taken her by surprise.
“It has given us pause to think about security, but also demonstrated the real risks inherent in this emerging AI technology to democracy, disinformation and other areas,” he said.
Siddhartha Venkataramakrishnan, an analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), said: “We have seen the meme gain significant traction and spread among the far right and beyond, but what is also noteworthy is how international it has now become.
“In a way it gets to the heart of what we might call the ‘dissident’ far-right – individuals who find themselves outside the mainstream political landscape – whether it’s ‘talkers’ who are just provoking, others who are into twee memes. A whole ecosystem has embraced it. Obviously, erotic imagery is also key to it. The target audience is almost exclusively young men.”
