In certain corners of the internet, on niche news feeds and algorithms, an AI-generated British schoolgirl has emerged as something of a cultural phenomenon.
Her name is Amelia, a purple-haired “goth girl” who proudly carries a mini union flag everywhere she goes and appears to have a penchant for racism.
If you are unfamiliar with Amelia, the chances are you will soon encounter one viral meme or another inspired by her on Facebook or X, where her reputation is growing.
Videos of Amelia typically feature her walking through London, or the House of Commons, declaring her love for England and warning of the dangers of “militant Muslims” or “third-world migrants”. In one clip she is harangued by bearded man in Islamic attire for eating a pork sausage.
The message is one well rehearsed on far-right social media, but it is the AI invention of Amelia that has made her endlessly adaptable, creating a viral internet trend that anyone with access to a mainstream chatbot can take part in. Users of X have turned to its Grok AI tool to create so many Amelia memes, she is now breaking out of niche online silos.
The origins of the character are ironic, to say they least. An early iteration of Amelia began life in a counter-extremism video game funded by the UK Home Office and created to deter young people aged 13-18 from being attracted to far right extremism in Yorkshire.
AI-generated Amelia far-right meme – video
Pathways: Navigating the Internet and Extremism is a simple multiple choice format game with basic animation. Its players are taken on a journey as characters at a college. They are invited to make decisions in scenarios including whether or download potentially extremist content or join an Amelia character on a rally organised by “a small political group” protesting against changes in society and the “erosion in British values”.
Certain choices result in a referral under the British government’s Prevent counter-terrorism programme.
However, it is a subversion of the Amelia character that has exploded across social media channels in a way that has astonished even the creators of the original game.
Among the plethora of increasingly sophisticated AI-generated iterations are a Manga-style Amelia, a Wallace and Gromit version and AI-generated “real life” encounters between her and the characters of Father Ted or Harry Potter, accompanied by racist language and far-right messaging.
Analysis provided to the Guardian by Logically, a UK company that monitors disinformation, indicated that an anonymous account known for skilfully disseminating far-right messaging started the Amelia meme on X on 9 January with a post that has since been viewed 1.4m times.
The volume of “Ameliaposting” has since gone from an average of 500 a day when that account first introduced it to the world to roughly 10,000, starting on 15 January as it hit international audiences. On Wednesday, it hit 11,137 posts on X alone.
In one of the most surreal twists, an Amelia cryptocurrency has emerged, with social media users seeking to leverage its value on the meme’s rising profile. On Wednesday, Elon Musk retweeted an X account promoting an Amelia cryptocurrency token.
“What we’re seeing is the monetisation of hate,” said Matteo Bergamini, the founder and CEO of Shout Out UK, a political and media literacy training company that created the original game.
“We’ve seen Telegram groups all messaging 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 deluge of hate mail, including death threats that have now been reported to the police.
Bergamini points out that the original initiative was never meant to be a stand-alone game. Rather, it was intended to be used in the classrooms alongside a suite of teaching resources, a fact he says coverage and commentary has ignored.
“There has been a lot of misrepresentation unfortunately,” he said. “The game does not state, for example, that questioning mass migration is inherently wrong.”
Others have suggested the initiative had backfired, not least by casting a “cute goth girl” as a negative character, leading to her inadvertently becoming a 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.
Nevertheless, the speed and sophistication surrounding the creation of supposedly subversive Amelia memes online has taken him by surprise.
“It has given us pause for thought about safety, while also demonstrating the very real risks inherent in this emerging AI technology when it comes to democracy, disinformation and other areas,” he said.
Siddharth Venkataramakrishnan, an analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), said: “We have seen the meme having a remarkable spread and proliferating among the far right and beyond, but what’s also been of note is how it is now international.
“In a way it gets to the heart of what we might term the ‘dissident’ far-right – individuals who position themselves outside of the mainstream political scene – whether that’s ‘shitposters’ who are just into provoking, others who are in twee memes. A whole ecosystem has embraced it. Clearly, the sexualised imagery is also key to this. The target audience is almost exclusively young men.”
