Suited and booted while crouching down on a step, Nigel Farage can be seen gently patting an adorable dog, who is wrapped in a blue cape.
The photo, posted on Facebook, is accompanied by a heartwarming story about how the Reform UK leader and his partner Laure Ferrari heroically recused 47 dogs after buying an entire shelter that was on the verge of closure.
It reads: “Forty-seven lives saved. No spotlight. Just heart.”
The viral post has around 4,000 comments, including one who writes: “Nigel this will increase your credibility on the political front.” Another commented: “Many people will vote for a person who shows compassion to animals.”
But the story is not true – and the picture is not real.
In fact, the post is just one of a spate of fake AI-generated content which has flooded social media in recent weeks.
Experts say the posts are part of a new trend offering bogus “good news” stories about high-profile figures in a bid to “weaponise empathy” and drive engagement.
Investigators from charity Full Fact have uncovered around 100 similar posts from a number of accounts. In total, the posts have prompted more than 380,000 total reactions – suggesting many are falling for false narratives which they say are being “churned out at an industrial scale”.
Another example includes a story claiming Mr Farage had donated millions to open homeless support centres across Kent. Another post claimed he had saved abandoned baby twins and given up his first-class plane seat to a military veteran.
Former prime minister Rishi Sunak was also the focus of one post and falsely claimed he was recovering in hospital. Restore Britain leader and MP Rupert Lowe, and Reform’s home affairs spokesman Zia Yusuf are also the subject of bogus posts.
Full Fact also found that while many of the pages had names mentioning the UK – such as ‘Britain Awakens’, ‘British Affairs Review’ and ‘Political Brief UK’ – most were managed by profiles which appear to be based in Vietnam.
There is no suggestion that any of the pages are associated with Reform UK or Mr Farage.
The accounts were taken down when reported to Meta. But Steve Nowottny, editor of Full Fact, warned that AI tools are making it “easier than ever for fictional slop to be churned out”.
“What’s striking about these posts is that they are offering fake ‘good news’ stories, leveraging empathy and positivity rather than outrage to drive engagement,” he said.
“The fact the posts we saw have had hundreds of thousands of reactions shows that many are falling for these false narratives.
“Accessible AI tools are making it easier than ever for fictional slop to be churned out on an industrial scale – potentially allowing content creators to profit as a result.
“So while it’s welcome that Meta has taken action against the accounts we identified, we can’t simply play misinformation whack-a-mole – we need sustained action from social media companies to ensure that AI content is identified more smartly.”
A spokesperson for Meta said: “We have clear community standards that prohibit harmful misinformation and inauthentic behaviour and we have removed these accounts for violating our policies.”
It is unclear who is behind the pages, but Full Fact found some 10 of the 11 pages found sharing fake stories were managed by at least one account based in Vietnam, sometimes alongside an account from another country, such as the US or Hong Kong.
Sam Stockwell, senior research associate at the Centre for Emerging Technology and Security at the Alan Turing Institute, said the posts are “weaponising empathy rather than hate”.
“Overseas content creators are now using AI to craft heartwarming fakes, knowing that social media algorithms prioritise content which trigger strong emotive reactions,” he said.
Professor Martin Innes, co-director of Cardiff University's Crime and Security Research Institute, said he is seeing content creators “churning out” misleading posts “at scale”, often generating revenue off the back of it.
“Where these kinds of visual disinformation and distortion used to take a reasonable amount of input, that is not the case anymore,” he said. “And as for the emotional register they are pitched in, that is just a way of trying to secure views in a noisy and cluttered attention order.”
The Independent has contacted Reform UK, and a spokesperson told Full Fact the claims made in the posts were false and stressed the party is not affiliated with any of the pages.
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