WIRED Magazine reports not just any scammer can use AI to slop together the pretty image of a woman and then market the image on the internet for money – but marketing to MAGA is is something different.
“A 22-year-old aspiring orthopedic surgeon from northern India got some money from his parents, but he says he spent most of it subsidizing his licensing exams, and he’s still saving up to hopefully emigrate to the US after graduation,” reported WIRED. “So, he started searching for ways to make additional money online.”
He tried different tactics, including YouTube shorts and selling study notes to other med students. But he later hit upon the idea of creating an AI-generated girl using Google Gemini’s Nano Banana Pro and selling bikini photos of her online.
“But when [he] started posting generic photos of a beautiful, scantily clad woman on Instagram, he was dismayed to find that none of the content was hitting, because “if you create a generic ‘hot girl,’ you’re competing with a million other models.”
But Gemini’s chatbot had a “cheat code” ready for him to help his model stand out: the “MAGA/conservative niche.”
“The conservative audience (especially older men in the US) often has higher disposable income and is more loyal,” it said, according to WIRED.
“Though Sam [a pseudonym] has never lived in the United States, he became an assiduous student of MAGA ideology, said WIRED.
“Every day I’d write something pro-Christian, pro-Second Amendment, pro-life, anti-abortion, anti-woke, and anti-immigration,” said Sam, adding that the grift seemed “almost too obvious.” But to his astonishment, the account “blew up.”
“Every Reel I posted was getting 3 million views, 5 million views, 10 million views. The algorithm loved it,” he said. Within a month, “Emily Hart” had more than 10,000 Instagram followers, many of whom also subscribed to her softcore AI-generated content on Fanvue. That, and through selling MAGA-themed T-shirts, like “PTSD: Pretty Tired of Stupid Democrats,” Sam was raking in a few thousand dollars a month.
“I was spending maybe 30 to 50 minutes of my day, and I was making good money for a medical student,” he says. “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.”
“The MAGA crowd is made up of dumb people — like, super dumb people. And they fall for it,” added Sam.