In the months leading up to the 2024 European elections, Maximilian Krah’s TikTok account became a factory for a new form of political manipulation. The Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) politician did not simply share his right-wing ideology, he fabricated visual ‘evidence’ using Artificial Intelligence (AI) generated imagery to depict fictional German families, staged nationalist demonstrations, and fabricated scenarios of a cultural threat from immigration. With over 1,300,000 views across 28 AI-generated video thumbnails, Krah’s digital campaign represented the weaponization of AI to amplify existing anxieties around migration, cultural identity, and other instances of societal insecurity.
Krah’s strategy mirrored a wider AfD pattern, with multiple accounts and politicians using AI-driven tactics across social media. The party continued posting AI-generated images beyond the European elections, a trend echoed by ideological supporters, right-wing groups, and even AI influencers. Rather than relying on existing photographs and graphic designers, AfD can now use fabricated imagery as visual hyperbole, amplifying societal anxieties into perceived existential threats to Germany and its citizens.
AfD’s Strategic Use of AI Imagery
The AfD’s use of AI-generated content served as visual bait, drawing viewers into the AfD’s far-right political messaging about migration, family values, and German nationalism. Rather than documenting real people or events, these images functioned as propaganda tools that blurred the line between an authentic political discourse and disinformation.
Throughout social media campaigns, the AfD used AI imagery to fabricate scenarios of mass migration to duel anti-immigrant sentiment. In March 2024, Maximilian Krah posted a TikTok video featuring an AI-generated image of an endless crowd of migrants streaming along a rural path. Likewise, the Krah used similar AI tactics to play into concerns of migration and welfare chauvinism. In his video “Training vs. Migration,” the thumbnail featured an AI generated image of a smiling Caucasian mechanic with the caption “Training instead of mass migration,” creating a false dichotomy between German workers and foreign migrants. By consistently pairing AI-generated visuals with emotionally charged captions, these posts reinforced a narrative that migrants posed a direct threat to German society, either culturally or economically.
Artificial image generation was deployed for Islamophobic content, targeting Muslims as a perceived cultural threat to German society. The AfD Esslingen branch posted an AI-generated image of a pig roast during Ramadan 2024, captioned “The feast of enjoyment.” This deliberately provocative content mocked Muslim dietary restrictions and religious observances. While the original AI image depicted Caucasian people enjoying a barbecue, subsequent editing and strategic posting transformed it into a deliberately provocative message mocking Muslim dietary restrictions and religious practices. This type of content frames Islam not merely as a religion but as a challenge to German cultural norms, reinforcing narratives that position Muslim communities as outsiders whose beliefs and customs are incompatible with national identity. By weaponizing AI in this way, the AfD amplified existing prejudices and constructed visual ‘evidence’ to heighten cultural anxieties among their audience.
To construct an ethno-nationalist identity, the AfD used AI to visualize representations of an ideal German identity. Throughout Krah’s thumbnails and posts, any figures intended to represent “Germans” were often AI-generated images of conventionally attractive white people, including happy couples and families. Another TikTok thumbnail featured a man in traditional lederhosen with the slogan “we want to be German and free,” whilst another, titled “Fight for Change,” shows an AI-generated German nationalist parade populated exclusively by white men. By consistently presenting this curated vision of German identity, the AfD reinforced a narrow, exclusionary conception of nationality, signalling that only those who fit into this image belonged in their political and cultural movement.
Another core component of the AfD’s AI arsenal was a Eurosceptic drive to shift blame for national decline onto the European Union. AI-generated images depicted struggling Germans, scenes of homelessness, and widespread poverty, visually dramatizing socioeconomic problems. These images were explicitly linked to EU policies, framing European institutions as directly responsible for domestic hardship. By creating supposed ‘evidence’ of EU failure, the AfD sought to amplify public frustration and distrust, turning structural issues of inequality into a narrative of deliberate external mismanagement. This tactic functioned in two ways: to reinforce anti-EU sentiment, but also to position the AfD as a defender of Germany against intranational bureaucracy. Here, emotionally charged visuals created by AI instil a sense of crisis for viewers.
Ideology and Imagery of the Global Far-Right
The AfD case points to an emerging, replicable strategy in which far-right movements weaponize AI to deepen political divides. The deployment of AI tools in this way reflects a broader international pattern, where ideology becomes intertwined with imagery. By replacing the need for authentic documentation, AI allows the far-right to manufacture ‘proof’ that visually confirms their ideological positions. Across the global far-right, AI-generated visuals are mobilized to reinforce core recurring themes in far-right politics: nativism, populism, anti-internationalism, and religious nationalism.
Nativism
A central strand of far-right rhetoric is nativism, which claims a nation belongs only to its ‘native’ people, often a homogenous group defined by race, ancestry, or culture rather than legal citizenship. AI-generated content allows far-right movements to promote nativism, by easily creating idealized representations of national identity whilst avoiding demographic reality. AI-generated content provides a new means of staging this narrative. This is evident in Russian state-owned media, where an AI image of white Russians waving national flags in a staged public celebration circulated. This echoes similar depictions used by the AfD to promote a “true” German identity.
Religious Nationalism
Religious nationalism similarly frames cultural identity as under siege, but grounds its claims in divine or moral authority. For the far-right, religion becomes both a justification for political power and a weapon against perceived cultural decline. AI manipulation offers new ways to dramatize these anxieties. In India, Hindu nationalist groups reportedly ran AI-generated ads targeting Muslims, blending religious and ethnic exclusion. In Europe, religion is frequently tied to social conservatism, particularly opposition to LGBTQ+ rights. Matteo Salvini, for instance, circulated fabricated images of pregnant men, presenting them as symbols of moral decay and threats to the traditional family. This fake content functions as “proof” for decline narratives, lending visual force to ideological claims that national identity and sacred values are in danger.
Populism
Populist movements thrive on portraying political elites and institutions as enemies of “the people,” recasting routine democratic contestation as betrayal. Deepfakes and manipulated images amplify what Sahin calls “ontological insecurity,” fostering doubt about cultural continuity, electoral integrity, and political legitimacy. The spread of an AI audio deepfake in Slovakia, in which leader Michal Šimečka was made to appear complicit in election fraud, demonstrates how such tactics cast ordinary politics as treachery. Similar audio deepfakes mimicking Joe Biden and encouraging people not to vote for him, or AI images exaggerating farmer protests in France and Poland serve to demonize opponents and inflate social unrest, reinforcing the claim that elites are conspiring against the people.
AI images have been used to amplify populist messaging of a corrupt establishment, a common trope in far-right parties seeking to win over their electoral competition. In France, the political movement “Reprenons le contrôle !” published an AI image of EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen adorned in an EU flag hijab, proclaiming that secularism in France is at risk to Islamic lobbying. The theme of suggesting political figures were captured by foreign interests is present across the global far-right. In the US, Donald Trump shared AI-generated images depicting Kamala Harris as a communist, amongst a sea of red supporters. Synthetic visuals transform concerns about elite betrayal into visceral representations of institutional corruption and foreign influence.
Anti-internationalism
In far-right politics, anti-internationalism frames global cooperation as a direct threat to national sovereignty. AI imagery is used to represent a battle for sovereignty and that being part of international organisations is a detriment to a sovereign states’ own economy, industries, and defence. As reported by propastop, the Russian state news agency RIA Novosti circulated AI propaganda portraying NATO as a swarm of grotesque rats huddled in a decaying building, a visual metaphor for a crumbling Western alliance.
In Europe, this theme frequently manifests as Euroscepticism. The AfD and other parties depict the EU as the source of insecurity, using AI-generated visuals to dramatize migration and erode trust in Brussels. AI images were used to visualize floods of migrants, with further image editing suggesting that the EU is to blame. The text “they opened our borders,” placed in the centre on an image of a crowd of immigrants in a French town. In Italy, Deputy Prime Minister and Lega’s Matteo Salvini adopted similar tactics by posting an AI-generated image of a young girl eating a pizza topped with insects, presenting it as an affirmation that EU food policies were degrading Italian cuisine.
The Aesthetics of (Artificial) Manipulation
AI-generated images are an effective strategy because it leverages human psychology and visual aesthetics. Images draw attention and lend a sense of authenticity, which provides fabricated content feel real and imminent. This visual power allows far-right movements to present their ideological claims in a way that bypasses scrutiny.
The most effective far-right AI disinformation campaigns are culturally specific, creating imagery that taps into societal anxieties and historical traumas unique to each region. In the United States, far-right groups evoke Cold War-era fears of communist infiltration, drawing on decades of McCarthyism. In Europe, AI-generated content amplifies migration anxieties, depicting synthetic scenarios of cultural displacement or economic threat. In India, Hindu nationalist groups exploit religious tensions, producing fabricated images targeting Muslim communities to inflame Islamophobic sentiment. This localized yet coordinated approach demonstrates how global far-right networks share tactics while tailoring content to exploit each society’s particular vulnerabilities and historical wounds.
The effectiveness of AI-generated imagery as a far-right manipulation tool is magnified by critical gaps in regulatory oversight and content moderation. While AI platforms may block overtly harmful prompts, far-right actors exploit image editing and captions to bypass these safeguards. Initial prompts often produce seemingly benign images of people, crowds, or events, which are then edited into inflammatory content. Traditional moderation struggles to detect this layered manipulation, and the rapid pace of AI development continues to overtake regulatory frameworks. As a result, far-right movements can deploy AI capabilities faster than institutions can respond.
The AfD’s deployment of AI-generated political content reveals how synthetic media functions as a new language for old fears. By creating compelling visual narratives unconstrained by factual documentation, far-right movements can present ‘evidence’ for their ideological positions. As these techniques spread globally, democratic societies face a new challenge: developing the cultural awareness and technological capabilities necessary to distinguish between authentic political discourse and AI-driven propaganda.