UK anti-immigration social media accounts traced to Sri Lanka and Vietnam

Key developments are emerging from the global stage. UK anti-immigration social media accounts traced to Sri Lanka and Vietnam14 minutes ago Share Save Add as preferred on GoogleMarianna SpringSocial media investigations correspondentBBCThe AI-generated videos present a vision of the UK in decline and sometimes taken over by MuslimsThe "Great British People" Facebook page, which purports to be from Yorkshire, has had 1. 3 million views for its latest video of an elderly white British man crying about his pension. Other videos show reporters discussing "the overwhelming scale of mass immigration" and asking viewers if they miss "the Britain we used to know".

But it is not clear whether the creator of the videos knows the UK at all: the account is really run by someone based in Sri Lanka. It is one of dozens of interconnected Facebook and Instagram accounts identified by Panorama and the Top Comment podcast, which create and share anti-immigration AI-generated posts about the UK to large audiences - but the creators are often located hundreds or thousands of miles away. Several are from Sri Lanka, the US and elsewhere in Europe, while others are in Vietnam and the Maldives, or linked to Iran and the UAE, according to information from Facebook's transparency tools, interviews with the content creators and other tell-tale signs on social media such as spelling and accounts they follow.

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One expert told the that research shows people are worse at detecting AI fakes than they think, and the more AI content they see, the more likely they are to distrust authentic material. London Mayor Sir Sadiq Khan - who has commissioned research into AI-generated images showing the capital in decline, which he says harm the city's reputation abroad - said while some of the people behind the accounts are motivated merely by money, others are backed by hostile states such as Russia and Iran. It is difficult to verify claims of direct state involvement, but a handful of the accounts do share posts sympathetic towards the Russian and Iranian governments.

The owners of the accounts did not respond to the 's attempts to contact them. Several accounts have repurposed their pages, seemingly to increase engagement, switching from topics such as "Make America Great Again" and "Life in the USA" to using AI to push anti-immigration narratives. Some of them have also occasionally experimented with content more sympathetic to migrants.

States and other groups are attempting to manipulate public opinion with Fake AI accounts such as these, according to Prof Sander van der Linden, a social psychologist at the University of Cambridge, who described them as "new evolution of influence operations". It is easy for AI fakers living overseas to pose as British nationals online, he said, because it is relatively cheap to buy social media accounts originally set up in the UK.

The development has drawn wide international attention, with diplomatic circles watching closely.