How AI became the far right’s latest weapon against refugees
Earphones plugged in, a cigarette dangling from his hand, Mohammed al-Mohammed was waiting for a train at a station in Hamburg, Germany, when he was enveloped by screams of horror. Amid the chaos of people fleeing, he glimpsed a flash of metal out of the corner of his eye. Turning, he saw a lady clutching a raised knife, pointed toward him.
Mohammed’s reflexes kicked in, and he pushed the lady away. As another man tackled her and threw her to the ground, Mohammed pinned the lady down until the police arrived. They congratulated him, treated him to a cappuccino and the matter was closed. The next day, as part of interviews he did with media outlets, a German tabloid took a picture of Mohammed at the station, in which he posed with his arms on his waist, grinning victoriously.
A couple of days later, Mohammed’s friend messaged him. His photo at the station had been manipulated using generative artificial intelligence (AI), depicting him in front of fake backgrounds, used as fodder for sardonic comments about what was perceived as the glorification of Mohammed’s act. Other photos showed an AI-generated likeness of him, leading to internet users questioning the veracity of the event. The photos made the rounds online, helping to propagate a large-scale disinformation campaign in Germany. The far-right politician Marie-Thérèse Kaiser tweeted under a photo of him, offering a “ticket for sending him back to his country.”
“The bad reaction honestly devastated me deeply, because my act was just human,” Mohammed said. “I didn’t do anything wrong, yet the racists were coming at me.”
The civil war in Syria started when Mohammed was 5 years old. Now 19, he made it to Germany after an arduous journey, having tried multiple times to escape the war, with border police even throwing him into a river during one of his attempts. He arrived in Germany in September 2022 to seek asylum, but his application was rejected and he is currently in “Duldung” status, which means his deportation is temporarily suspended.
Germany is the world’s third-largest host of Syrian refugees, who were pushed out of their country by years of civil war and a shattered economy. Compounding the all-too-real issue of problematic media portrayals of Syrian refugees is the weaponization of ever-evolving AI by far-right parties like Kaiser’s Alternative for Germany (AfD). [Continue reading…]