You're listening to a stage talk titled Synthetic
Propaganda, tracing an AI driven political operation.
This week we were joined by the Bureau of Investigative
Journalism's Effie Webb. Effie specialises in
investigating big tech and AI. In this talk,
she shares how she uncovered a far right political
party that had paid for an AI influencer. and
provides advice on how to investigate AI propaganda
without amplifying it further. You can find links
to all the resources mentioned in the talk in
the podcast description. This talk was hosted
by me, Charlotte Mar, on Thursday the 16th of
April, 2026, in the Bill and Kat Discord server.
So over the past few years, we've seen rapid
advances in generative AI reshape everything
from media production to political communication.
At the same time, concerns about disinformation,
influence operations and the integrity of online
spaces have only intensified, particularly as
new tools make it easier to create persuasive
and scalable forms of content. Today's conversation
sits at that intersection. Our guest is Effie
Webb, an investigative reporter with the Bureau
of Investigative Journalism. whose recent work
explores how emerging technologies are being
used within political campaigning in the UK.
Her reporting raises important questions, not
just about what's possible with AI, but about
transparency, accountability and how we understand
influence in an increasingly synthetic media
environment. Effie will talk to us about her
reporting and what some experts are calling a
first -of -its -kind case, where a registered
political party paid for content from an AI -generated
influencer pushing ideological messaging. Before
we begin, a short reminder that you can place
your questions in the chat accessible in the
right -hand corner of your screen. But please
remember that this is being audio recorded for
the podcast. So if you don't want me to mention
your username, please add that as a note in your
question. Okay. Effie, over to you. I will mute
my mic. Thanks, Charlie. Yeah, I do shout if
my audio goes a bit dodge, but it should be okay.
Yeah, great to be here. Yeah, as you said, I'm
an AI reporter at the Bureau of Investigative
Journalism. For those who don't know the Bureau,
we're an impact -driven non -profit newsroom
based in London. And yeah, I've been increasingly
focused on AI influence operations and political
campaigning, which brings me to this Danny Bones
So yeah, in a nutshell, the last few months I
traced this anonymous influence operation essentially
behind an AI rapper, political activist, commentator,
et cetera, to a registered political party, Advance
UK, and their kind of by -election campaign in
Manchester. So I thought it would be maybe interesting
if we could just like listen to some Danny Bones
content okay so i'm gonna try and play a Danny
Bones song this might work so this was his most
recent track called UK So yeah, that's Steiny
Bones' latest song. How do I come across Steiny
Bones? Maybe that's useful to... go through first.
So I found him on Spotify. It was in a Discover
Weekly playlist. I'd been kind of keeping an
eye on AI -generated music. So I think Spotify
sort of picked up on that. I've been listening
to like a bit of the Crew Con Gazette stuff as
well, because that had made some headlines. And
yeah, I'd listened to This is England, which
is by far Danny Bone's most sort of popular song.
Um, and yeah, really good production quality,
production value, kind of like mixing and mastering
that was professional, like authentic sounding
vocals, no kind of trace of an AI slot type song.
Um, press on the profile and like notice the
artist profile image was an AI generated image.
Um, I thought that was interesting given that
like Aside from that sign of AI, there were hundreds
of thousands of streams across the four songs,
I think it was at that point. And he not verified
as an artist because Spotify doesn't do verification
anymore, but registered as an artist. And Spotify
didn't seem to be kind of demoting the artist
for being AI type thing. So then I went to social
media and saw he... he, it was across sort of
all the mainstream platforms and having only
started in kind of November time was cultivating
a like pretty healthy following by posting kind
of mostly I'd say YouTube shorts and TikToks,
but also kind of reels and videos on Twitter
of kind of anti -migrant, anti -Muslim dog whistle
type content, very conspiracy adjacent stuff
a lot of the time, all with this kind of patriotic
undertone and sort of implicit or explicit calls
that we should all kind of take back our country
and fight for, yeah, fight for the sort of British
or Britain that wants wars type thing. What I
found in, again, I'm going to just quickly share
my screen because I think the way that Danny
Bones is presented, yeah, so he has like kind
of a roster of different looks that his creators
have kind of given him on purpose. So he's kind
of like sometimes a religious figure. Sometimes
he's like more of a gritty grime artist. Sometimes
he's a bit more of like a skinhead type rioter.
And yeah, I think that's not an accident. I think
he's not made to be... this isn't a deep fake
situation. He is a kind of persona and character
that can kind of be repurposed and remixed for
whatever audience is the target. And in this
case, it is kind of young British men, overwhelmingly,
but more on that later. I'll stop sharing now.
I was interested in this Danny Bones character,
but at this point it was just a curiosity. At
the same time, I'd been looking at the use of
AI and synthetic media by political groups and
particularly right -wing political groups and
came across Advanced UK's recent shorts they
were posting on on Twitter, sorry, and on TikTok
actually, in this kind of attempt to appeal to
a younger population and just a bit of context
about what Advanced UK are for those who probably
understand we've never heard of them. They are
a kind of fringe splinter party headed by Ben
Habib, who's the former co -deputy leader of
Reform UK, Nigel Farage's party. They're sort
of Christian nationalist, they would dispute
the term far -right, but I would say far -right
party whose policies all sort of center on this
idea that mass immigration is a national emergency
and that sort of mass deportation is the solution,
alongside a sort of policy to kind of adopt widespread
Christianity and sort of pious other religions.
And that's kind of where I think the Diabones
character has interesting parallels. But at this
point, I was just noticing Advanced UK's use
of AI. It wasn't the, I hadn't connected the
two, so to speak. And it was in late January
when Advanced UK were launching their culture
and immigration policies. They posted a two minute
video, which was a of AI -generated video. It
was a montage of British culture and history,
all parts of it at least, with various wars.
So second world war soldiers, Anglo -Saxon warriors,
et cetera. And there was a gritty voiceover that
urged people to, or not urge people to vote advance,
but say that an advanced UK government would
be able to bring back bringing Britain back to
its kind of, um, uh, you know, a time when, when
it was better type thing. Um, and this, yeah,
this video for whatever reason, sort of resembled
the Danny Bones type content that I had been
kind of keeping on as well. And the same kind
of style and overlay. It also had a similar voiceover
and the backing track as well. like was actually
the instrumental to the This is England song,
which is like his most popular song. But that
kind of subtle detail was kind of easy to miss.
And I had to re -watch this video a couple of
times before, before really clocking on to that.
And then right at the end of the video, a logo
or, you know, a text overlay for the Node project
flashes up for a second. The Node project, I
then kind of uh, searched up and found that they
were the sort of, they described themselves as
a collective. So the influence collective behind,
um, this Danny Bones kind of character or persona,
if you like, um, very, I mean, they've changed
their website now, but the website in there in
its original form was this very slick boutique
style, um, influence agency type website, one
that you might expect a kind of high -end modeling,
um, agency to have, um, with yeah, Danny Bones
kind of plastered over the front of it and at
the same time said, intentionally being very
vague, both in its language about what it does
and who's behind it and sort of also where it's
based. There was nothing in terms of clues there.
So yeah, I was really interested in what this
node project thing was because now we had a kind
of indication that um, at the very least, Advanced
UK were using, um, node project content in their,
in at least one of their videos. Um, so there
were two questions, I suppose. One was who, like,
who is the node project? How many people are
behind it? Where are they based? And two, is
money being exchanged hands here? So is, is this
sort of a paid job? Um, or, you know, maybe other
hypothesis being is advanced UK kind of someone
in the social media team advanced kind of just
pirating or copying from the node project. So
at that point, it became a bit of traditional
journalism, just calling up advanced UK and being
like, hi, I'd like to speak to you about your
AI generated stuff. They were very open with
me about their relationship to the node project.
They did tell me that they had paid for that
two minute video I mentioned earlier. They didn't
tell me how much, although they did say that
it was not an insignificant amount of money.
I did press them a bit on how much they paid,
but they wouldn't go into that. I then spoke
to someone else at advance who kind of is more
on the social media end of things. And they said
that it wasn't just that video, but it was a
series of videos. which was significant because
the other series of videos they commissioned
from the Node Project were sort of their campaigning
videos for this by -election, which was the Gortland
-Denton by -election where Advance UK were contesting
their first ever seat. And the Node Project made
at least four videos, sort of one that kind of
fronted their candidate, Nick Buckley. another
that kind of showed this again, similar to sort
of the Danny Bones type content, a very dystopian
AI generated Britain, whilst urging people to
register to vote in the upcoming by -election.
So yeah, at this point it was clear that it was
confirmed that by a lease advance that there
had been a sort of paid payment here. We didn't
know how much. there was a contact email for
the Node project and that was kind of all there
was in terms of how to get in touch with them.
They were also relatively happy to engage in
conversation over email, not over video, very
keen to keep their anonymity as were advanced.
So advanced were also, although they'd claimed
they'd met some of the people behind the Node
project, they were They refused to sort of give
anything away in terms of who they were or where
they were based, et cetera. So at that point,
it was kind of a judgment call. Like we had enough
to publish a story or more than enough to publish
a story. We had an AI rapper, Danny Bones, an
enormous influence operation and a fringe political
party that has had the backing of Elon Musk paying
for election campaign content that is AI generated.
Almost for my own curiosity, I wanted to get
to the bottom of who was behind the Node project
and indeed how many people there were. So yeah,
as I'd been sort of tracking and monitoring the
node project. I'd been tracking and kind of just
making a huge kind of spreadsheet of who were
the most frequent engagers, who was commenting
the most, who was donating. So they had a buy
me a coffee donation page set up, who were kind
of like the early donators on that. And, you
know, just searching as well on Meta's ad library
and uh, TikTok's, TikTok's ad library as well.
So that was useful in two ways. Meta's ad library
showed me who, well, one that there was the node
project were paying for ads to like paid for,
I think it was five ads for, to yeah, to promote
themselves. Um, and they were targeting 18 to
35 year old UK men, most of them. Uh, and then
TikTok was useful in another way because it showed
that the, someone had paid for a like not an
ad, hashtag ad type thing, but someone had boosted
some node project content and this was a particular
person called AJ. And AJ had come up in my like
earlier kind of network mapping of kind of particularly
enthusiastic and committed followers, I suppose.
So it then became a question of, is this person
a super fan or is he a member of the node project
or, you know, node project themselves. And it
was very, um, it was interesting because I think
there were some behaviors or things being posted
that did, um, that resemble just kind of fan
behavior. So resharing, reposting, um, liking,
engaging, et cetera. There were others that went
a step further. So on their personal accounts,
particularly on TikTok, on threads as well, posting.
I remember distinctly there was a Node Project
t -shirt, or there was a t -shirt with the Node
Project logo on it that I hadn't seen and was
not apparent at all on any of the Node Project
or Danny Bones platforms, but only on AJ's platforms.
So that struck me as very strange behavior for
someone who was just a fan. Um, I did get in
touch with both AJ and the Node project, um,
Stokes people, possibly the same people about
this and they both denied, um, his involvement
and said that he, yeah, he was, he was nothing
more than a fan. Um, the story did shift a few
times. So, um, there was a lot of back and forth.
Um, but yeah, when it came to publishing, it
was a judgment call that we didn't quite have
a smoking gun to say definitively. this is the
node project, here you go. Because again, it
seems like there's not a kind of zero chance
that there isn't at least more than one person
involved in this type thing. And we did mention
him in the piece though. So that was kind of...
That was worth noting, but we didn't want to
kind of just pin it on someone when it could
be a larger operation. Maybe I will leave it
there for now. And yeah, there's a lot more in
terms of what happened after. But yeah, Charlie,
if you want to. Yeah, I think people in the comments
are just digging into the NOE project right now.
I posted their websites and people are very interested
in what they've got to say on it. It's really
interesting what you were saying about just the
volume of this and the role that AI is playing.
We'd spoken in the comments, particularly about
how it's not just a UK focused issue. We've also
got, Bellingcat recently covered, how AI generations
were being used to spread hate speech in India
around election candidates and how troublesome
that is. Today, the Foreign Press Association
put out a statement on the IDF using AI to change
an image of a journalist. It's kind of terrifying
how much this is seeping into politics. In regards
to this particular operation, how sophisticated
is it? Are we looking at something that could
be replicable by other party groups? Or is this
only something that you think might? operate
within the UK political structure? Yeah, it's
a good question and don't think it's unique to
the UK at all. I can see a world in which Danny
Bones himself, there's nothing particularly British
about the Danny Bones character except his British
outfits. He could easily be used in a Polish
election. He looks quite Eastern European, a
lot of people have said. In terms of the AI element,
I think AI poses a lot of threats to democracy,
et cetera. This isn't a deep fake situation.
He does look increasingly hyper real, I think,
if I came at it fresh. If I was coming at it
fresh now, I would probably have taken a step
back and been like, is that real? Is it not?
But back in January, there were very clear AI
giveaways, especially with the the music videos.
I think it is quite a sophisticated operation.
I think the music in particular. So I wanted
to know kind of, yeah, is this just a case of
they're downloading a commercial AI music tool?
So like some of the mainstream ones like Suno
or UDO. I don't know if you pronounce that right,
but yeah, UDO and Suno. I downloaded Suno, pasted
in the lyrics to a Danny Bowen song and within
like a minute or two had four different tracks
in four different genres. So like drill, grime,
acoustic, and they were nowhere near as good
as Danny Bones sort of stuff. But it did make
me think, okay, this isn't something where you
need to be a musician or a complete tech whiz
to do. Um, and I think, but I do think there's
something about the Dunnybone stuff that, um,
is not like, that does kind of put him in a category
that isn't slot. I also think the character itself
and the kind of character storytelling and creation
that goes into it, um, that the creators or creator
has put quite a lot of thought into in terms
of making sure both technically that the character
is consistent from video to video in terms of
voice and appearance, et cetera, but also the
political stuff. They are very reactive to the
current affairs and current events of the day.
During the Gortons and Denton by -election, there
was a lot of far -right hate towards the Green
Party and the various tactics. He was very on
the money and very quick at putting out those
videos. Is it sophisticated? Yes. Is it reputable?
Definitely yes. Is it something that I think
you could do pretty cheaply? Also, yes. And I
think that there's nothing to say that we...
I think the music medium is like maybe the most
interesting part of this because also I think
if you're a kind of rapper or a drill slash grime
artist, you do have a bit more license to kind
of say the controversial or like push the overton
window a bit more with like... what you're saying
as opposed to a traditional influencer word.
We also saw in Iran with the Lego AI rap propaganda
that was coming out a few weeks, maybe even still
is coming out. I think there's just an interesting
move into the music space because music is so
visceral and it is catchy and it is memorable
and it does a bit of political work without a
listener necessarily approaching it from a political
space. Yeah, and we've seen recently artists
deny politicians from using their music as well
in big political stages. We had a comment earlier
that said, this is one of the more worrying things
about AI for me. It lets fringe groups access
a production quality and even artistry that they
either couldn't have afforded or they wouldn't
have been able to find artists willing to make
things for them, which I think is really relevant.
We actually had a question about the AI Lego
videos earlier and since you brought it up, I'll
mention it. When AI is used by multiple actors
in a political conflict or war, what can be done
by both the media and the public in order to
be able to sift through all the slop? What are
your thoughts on that particularly? Yeah, it's
a great question. And I think the media has,
we have to think carefully about coverage being
thoughtful, responsible, and that we're not just
echoing and amplifying. you know, back and forth
slot between two bad actors or more bad actors.
I think for this story and this was like, again,
it was a judgment call in how much kind of, you
know, there's a balancing act of you want to
paint the picture of Danny Bones and you want
to show the sort of harmful Islamophobic, xenophobic,
racist, far -right, conspiratorial content whilst
also not just becoming a like unpaid bit of marketing
for him. I think whenever you report on something
bad like that, and especially with AI where people
are curious and they'll go and press on the Spotify
artist or go to the social media, which we did
see happen, it's kind of an inevitable balancing
act that you have to just make a call on. In
a general sense, I think a good rule of thumb
is like, think about why you're reporting it.
Is it just like, huh, like this is, this is kind
of, this is really funny. This is, um, this is,
yeah, exactly. This is sort of AI slop being
done for AI slop sake. I think, yeah, obviously
because this had an actual registered UK political
party's funding, it was a story worth telling.
If it hadn't had the funding, I think There may
have been an argument to publish anyway because
it was still being used by the party. But I think
going forward and knowing now what happened after
we published and the kind of publicity that Danny
Bones did end up getting and the Node Project
did end up kind of making money essentially from
our coverage, I will approach stories with that
in mind, I think, going forward. I really want
to touch on that. But first, maybe you can give
us a little bit more background on the Node project
because we have had a few questions about that
specifically. So someone asked earlier if there
was anything in the UK that kind of protected
us from organizations like the Node project.
And so Hans just asked, is this Node project
registered with Companies House? And perhaps
you can just give us a little bit more breakdown
on the No Project, what it is specifically, and
then maybe we can go into the impact the article
had after. Sure. Yeah, that's a good question.
No, they're not on Companies House, sadly. They
have a website, that is kind of all they have.
Well, they've got a website and then they've
got all their social media platforms where they
kind of... Um, frame themselves as sort of the
management of Danny Bones, um, the sort of, yeah,
artist manager. Um, the, I have archived the
previous website, so if anyone's interested in
seeing it in its original form, um, I can, I
can send that over, but essentially, um, now
what the website is or, you know, what the known
project shows is a kind of very stripped back
thing saying, Hey, sign up for a paid membership
here. You can be a £20. you can pay 20 pounds
to be a Node founding member, sorry, a Node early
member, or you can pay 100 pounds to be a founding
member and have access to a private telegram
group and all sorts of perks that are promised
like that. And you can see that they've made
kind of over two grand just in the last three
weeks from that. So clearly there is interest
in the Node project and In terms of their website,
I did a Whois lookup and it had this kind of
domain registration that was shielded by a commercial
privacy proxy service, like quite standard. So
it was just a case of getting in touch with them.
trying to, well, trying to keep the conversation
going, not being super confrontational and kind
of like accusatory essentially, but actually
just like entering a dialogue with them. Um,
I will say I, and this is kind of a piece to,
to come, so I won't like say too much, but I
do have a bit more of a lead now on like who
is behind the node project. Um, so yeah. more
to come on that, but in terms of the bit about
kind of protections we have, there are like,
I think the key ones are like the Advertising
Standards Authority and the Electoral Commission,
both of whom have rules in terms of, you know,
they weren't, none of these rules really were
obviously designed for kind of AI influences
or synthetic influences, but there are rules
around, you know, disclosure and transparency
when something is a um, paid for ads and when
something is, um, particularly when it's a kind
of political campaign. So, and there is a lot
of scrutiny on that kind of thing at the moment
and kind of making sure those rules do kind of
match the, the AI age. So, um, I think, yeah,
yes and no in terms of, in terms of kind of protection.
Thanks for answering that. And you, you've kind
of hinted a little bit about what happened. Um,
but perhaps it's a good lesson as well for the
audience to hear about. what happened after you
published, because the No Project and a small
group of crypto traders then tried to turn the
coverage itself into a source of income, right?
I'm sharing your second article in the chat now
for those who might want to read it as you talk
about this. Yeah, so yeah, I think what I was
prepared for after we published the first was
like backlash from the far right, which often
happens and maybe some personal online attacks
at me. That didn't happen at all. That was all
very above board and professional and there was
no doxing, none of that. What happened instead
was the Danny Bones character and the Node Project
very much leaned into the criticism and leaned
into the controversy. They quickly made a reaction
video going bit by bit through our article and
calling out which bits were wrong in their mind
and then ending this video with a call to support
the cause and donate and then they had a new
donation link. There was a series of other videos
that followed that and you could see they were
just trying to stir controversy and classic kind
of tropes like mainstream media kind of left
state. sponsored kind of stuff were being thrown
around and sort of accusations we were trying
to silence him or, yeah, silence Danny, so to
speak. On a completely separate corner of Twitter
or, you know, relatively separate corner of Twitter,
two groups were set up called The Node Project,
which were sort of, yeah, these crypto speculators
who saw this stir that had been created around
our coverage and also the Daily Mail's coverage,
plus Danny Bones and the Node Project, plus the
far -right reaction and the back and forth we
were having. The crypto speculators very shrewdly
thought this seems like a moment that could be
flipped into a meme coin or into a lucrative
crypto opportunity. At the time, I had tracked
four Danny Bones meme coins that popped up on
the Solana blockchain created on Pumpfun. And
I actually just checked before this talk and
now there are 40. Forty and I think there are
about a dozen creators behind them. So some of
them are kind of duplicates or, you know, the
creator created more than one type thing, but
still that's... that's a fair amount of coins.
And this all happened within about 48 hours.
So like the Danny Bones blackbash happened within
three hours, the coins popped up. From what I
could tell and from what I could trace, largely
from people in the US, there wasn't an indication
that the people causing the hype and encouraging
people to buy into these coins were in any way
kind of connected to advanced UK, anyway kind
of interested in British politics necessarily,
but were more kind of just opportunistic and
rightly seeing like this as a kind of political
moment that, you know, sitting with parallels
to a very simple, another situation with this
Amelia character who also was turned into a Mean
Boy and I can go into that a little bit more
if we want, but a few months prior to our story,
Elon Musk had kind of retweeted about this immediate
AI character, which had made the mean coins related
to her extremely lucrative. So I think there
was a sort of logic that maybe we can make that
happen again and get endorsement from Musk himself,
which didn't happen and the coin sort of... um,
crash and value, um, relatively quickly, but
they are still, they're still floating around.
So you never know. So you didn't predict this
kind of response, um, that it did happen. Has
it changed the way that you mentioned earlier
that you might change the way that your report
going forwards? What kind of concerns or, or
considerations are you now putting in for this
next report that you're working on? Yeah, it's
a good question. I wouldn't dissuade people from
covering this type of stuff at all. I just think
it's interesting to be prepared for these different
types of responses and reactions that aren't
necessarily the traditional personal attacks,
but actually might be much more of a kind of
who's going to try and cash in on the coverage.
Again, the reason we did that second piece is
it was a story in itself. We then had a look
at the whole Node project commercial engine and
realized there were six revenue streams, commissions
from Advanced UK, ad hoc donations, both crypto
and normal. There was the money from Spotify
and possibly money from X probably. Not, well,
the other platforms didn't claim that he was,
they were earning on that. Um, and then obviously
the crypto hype. So when the sort of 24, 48 hours
of crypto hype was happening, uh, the node project
shared their own kind of wallet. So they did
kind of cash in it to some extent on that or
at least appeared to. So I think, yeah, it, it
made the. It almost made the, um, hateful kind
of side of all this and the kind of, um, yeah,
sort of, um, political side secondary to the,
um, economic side, I think. And the, the commercial
side almost became the more interesting one because
again, we didn't, we don't know how political
or how apolitical even, uh, the Node project
and its actors are. And again, it's something
we've seen before. My colleague Niamh published
a story. um, late last year about, uh, individual
in Sri Lanka who was making a lot of money, um,
making kind of, uh, AI slop kind of videos targeting,
um, you know, relatively racist videos targeting,
um, UK audiences. And not only kind of, he was
making and distributing them and cashing in on
that, but he had a kind of, um, program or kind
of Academy, you can call it, to teach others
to do it and go viral and make money. So it's,
yeah, the incentives to do this are very clearly
financial and you don't need to be a holistically
aligned, ideologically aligned person to do this.
So it really could be anyone. So I think that's
something I'm thinking about more going forward.
It's a money -making machine. Interesting. Hexnaught
asked earlier, Really great work from Effie.
Is there any indication of this type of usage
of AI propaganda in a highly targeted manner?
I'm effectively thinking of the combination of
voter targeting based on area, interest and specific
propaganda. Edie, do we see a different Danny
Bones type for users in Belfast versus Cardiff
versus London? Ooh, that's a very good, yeah,
that's a great question. The only, yeah, as I
kind of said earlier, the only indication that
there are kind of possibly different, different
Danny Bones for different audiences are those,
um, kind of different digital skins, if you will,
that he, that the creators will give him. And
I do think there is a sense that they're doing
that on purpose to, so as to not alienate, um,
part of his audience who clearly are not into
like UK grime and UK drill. but are more on the
Christian side of things. And then thirdly, the
kind of more riot, like overtly political stuff.
So I think there's definitely kind of slices
of his audience that he is trying to appeal to
maybe all at once. It would be really interesting
actually, I think, yeah, to see where those,
I mean, the Metta ad data could only really give
us so much in terms of like how granular that
is. Obviously Metta used to be better and I think
other platforms are pretty rubbish in terms of
targeting, but yeah, no, I think going forward
with other elections coming up, you know, midterms
in the US and May elections here, it would be
really interesting to to have a look at that
kind of data and, you know, maybe set up some
kind of profiles based in those places to see
if different types fetch different kind of profiles,
so to speak. There's been a bit of chatter in
the chat about whether you saw any evidence towards
or any evidence that dismissed a theory that
this could have any foreign influence involvement.
Often, you know, you see AI propaganda campaigns
are coming from foreign sources. Is this just
a UK based operation or have you seen any indication
that it could be wider field as well? Yeah, I
think it's such a hard thing to attribute and
going off the word of the Node project, I wasn't
keen to like take their word as final. They said
they were based in the UK or he, it, whatever,
said they were based in the UK. Fine. AJ, as
far as I could tell, is also UK based. Advanced
UK, Ben Habib himself said he'd met them or had
met people who are involved in the Node project
and that they were based up north. So increasingly
as I was going through this, my hypothesis went
further and further away from this being a foreign
interference situation. That's not just it, but
again, like the whole kind of node project set
up and the way that they allude to themselves
is that like, this could be one node of like
multiple different, um, different kind of, um,
different nodes. And again, it's a very kind
of nascent operation only starting November.
The Danny Bones character is the only kind of,
you know, is that kind of, um, proof of concept
potentially. And that could be Danny Bones for,
for, for other jurisdictions and other kind of
localities. There is no indication directly of
it being a foreign thing. I also just think there's
a hunch that whoever's behind it is so tapped
into the minutiae of UK news and not in a kind
of way that anyone outside the UK could just
tap into, oh, we've got a kind of we've got a
lot of backlash towards like small boats or whatever,
but like very, very kind of hyper local news
and stuff like that. Again, doesn't mean it couldn't
be a very sophisticated and politically aligned,
you know, for an actor, but that was another
kind of heuristic, I suppose. Yeah, it does really
speak to a lot of British signals, especially
to do with the far right in the UK. If you are
interested in learning a little bit more about
foreign influence operations and disinformation
campaigns, we did speak to DoubleThink Labs Jasper
Hewitt, I think last year or the year before
on the stage talks about Chinese influence operations
and disinformation campaigns. So I just put the
link to that in the chat in case you want to
listen back to that. It's interesting that they
are based in the UK but aren't on Companies House.
That's an interesting question. as to why they're
not there. But I'm sure you might explore that
in your upcoming piece. We had a simple question,
they said it earlier in the chat. Did you see
any evidence that people believed Danny Bones
was real? Did anyone seem to know it was fake
and not care? I'm curious about whether we're
moving towards a time where authenticity doesn't
matter as much as production value and appeal
to people's own biases. No, I love that point.
Regardless of how real he appears, there is still
a compelling character there. There's catchy
songs that get stuck in your head that maybe
then filter into your unconscious biases. I remember
when he got banned from TikTok because we didn't
report him, but we asked TikTok for a right of
reply. I kind of felt sorry for him, the weird
way, because he did this really... Anyways, I
was really anthropomorphizing him, despite knowing
how synthetic he was. And in terms of the first
part of your question about were there people
that genuinely thought he was real? Yes, absolutely.
Most people that asked me about this initially
is, is this guy real? Who is this guy? Is he
real? So that's been something to really reckon
with. And again, for reporting as well, to just
make that explicit. What's been interesting as
well is the way he will stitch together footage
that is real. Again, because he's sort of commentating
on the day's news, he'll stitch together like
a normal politician or activist might, stitch
together real footage. very sophisticatedly place
himself, the avatar, in that space. So that's
like Trafalgar Square or something like that.
So yeah, I wouldn't blame anyone who would kind
of question whether or not he was real. And I
think particularly, yeah, as I've said before,
the music side of things, I'm sure there are
people who are listening to him on Spotify and
have no idea that there's like a sort of AI generated
persona behind him. And same with Advanced UK,
I don't. I think they were pretty convinced by
it when I spoke to them. Oh, you think Advanced
UK thinks he's a real artist? No, I think they
were just very impressed, as they should be.
I think they were just like, this is incredible,
incredible air. I was about to say, I think someone
needs to chat to them with those. They think
they're famous for a real creator. You mentioned
that you'd reported it just now to platforms
like TikTok and Instagram, right? And they both
took action. Do you think current moderation
systems are equipped for this type of content?
And Spotify, I'm guessing you did report to that
they didn't take a step. Why was that? Yeah,
we didn't report in a takedown way to any of
the platforms. We wouldn't ever do that as journalists.
We were just generally interested in what's their
policies on both AI -generated influences like
this, on disclosure, on AI labeling, and on the
political links, plus a lot of the more egregious
hateful content. It was interesting seeing the
array of or the range of responsiveness from
the different platforms. So yeah, TikTok completely
banned the account straight away, which was a
surprise, I think. You can speculate about why,
but I think maybe because all of the social media
companies are under a lot of scrutiny now with
the kind of litigation in America about addiction
and social media harms, possibly. Instagram took
down three of the videos that I've flagged. YouTube...
didn't take anything down, but they added AI
disclosure labels, which was interesting and
not quite the point. YouTube have demonetized
AI generated videos. Not because of this story,
but that was sort of earlier in the year. X didn't
get back to us, surprise, surprise. Spotify,
and I think this is reasonable from Spotify.
Spotify didn't act and What Spotify are dealing
with content wise are just the songs, which aren't
necessarily like overtly racist or Islamophobic
or anything. It's the content, which is kind
of the more on the problematic side of things.
So Spotify, I had an interesting conversation
with them where they said, look, there's a whole
spectrum of artists using AI and not using AI.
there's no way to tell whether an artist necessarily
is using AI, which is quite scary. Um, and that
some artists, you know, they are real, but are
using AI in their, in their day -to -day kind
of production, um, uh, methods just like, you
know, we all are at work and things like that.
So yeah, I think Spotify quite lacks, um, when
it comes to AI, but I think in terms of moderating
the content, it is really difficult to moderate,
um, music and audio and like more so I would
say than video just because a lot of the nuance
and yeah a lot of the meaning can kind of get
lost in like um kind of rhetoric and you know
there's then this plausible deniability about
like oh maybe you didn't actually mean that because
it's a rap song where you know there's lots of
it's quite normal to use a slur or it's quite
normal to use like language that incites violence
type thing uh whereas it would be much more easy
to moderate them all. traditional kind of someone
giving a hot take on YouTube or something. Yeah,
that's a really interesting point about where
the lines are when it comes to music. For example,
the Indian AI generated imagery that was created
to generate hate around the elections that I
talked about earlier that we recently released
an investigation on. All of that was still imagery
and video imagery that clearly contained very
hateful messaging and was rightly in some cases
taken down from platforms. But yeah, as you're
saying in music, the lines are a little bit more
blurred and less clear. Somebody shared earlier
actually a case, another case where an AI generated
band had released two albums on Spotify before
they were kind of, before they admitted that
they were completely air -generated and they
got over 1 million views, listens. Really interesting
that Spotify is kind of finding themselves in
this kind of hole. You mentioned that the lyrics
to Danny Bones' songs aren't... too explicit.
What kind of lines are we, what kind of things
is he talking about specifically? And where do
you think the lines between kind of creative
expression and political manipulation, where
can we draw the line when AI is involved with
that? Yeah, I'm not sure AI changes the line
at all. I think AI just makes the accountability
much more murky. I think where Danny Bones' music
is, I mean, okay, let's say, it is worth saying,
I think it has got, and that clip I showed at
the beginning, it has got a little bit more crossing
the line, I think. So like, you know, more explicitly
mentioning, you know, more explicit criticisms
of immigrants and, you know, the fact that we
are handing quotes, well, I'm not going to directly
quote, but like handing out benefits to migrants
who don't benefit the country type thing and
getting much more overtly political. I think,
again, it's the lyrics, but what Spotify I think
would say is the lyrics by themselves and the
songs by themselves without the music videos,
which is kind of a separate beast to Danny Bones
short form content, are relatively harmless.
The music videos and the songs together, I would
say, is where you can kind of pick up on the
implications he's making in his songs. I think
he's in his right to be very critical of the
government and that's totally fine. There's a
lot of things he says which I think we'd all
agree with. There's, yeah, there's always, you
know, like, this isn't to say, like, he shouldn't
have kind of free speech, etc. But I think there
is, again, yeah, with an AI musician, there's,
yeah, there's two levels, or there's two kind
of layers of accountability that are more difficult,
both kind of, who do you call out if something
does? across the line, especially if a party
has paid for it. Like, is the party going to
take the responsibility? Is the platform, is
the musician, is the creator? It's very unclear.
And the second one being, well, it's music. You
know, it's a genre that can evoke racial slurs
or, you know. homophobic slurs, et cetera, which
do appear at times in his music. But again, it
hits a minefield and I think Spotify and other
distributors will have to think carefully about
whether they want to keep allowing this kind
of stuff to maybe even take over human artists
on the platform. I'm not saying that's happened,
I don't know the stats, but I think YouTube made
a conscious decision to stop monetizing AI. videos.
And again, that might be completely commercial
as opposed to anything ethical, but like, you
know, you're just, if you just have an onslaught
of AI slot, then you're not going to get the
views you want to get. So it might be something
we, I think it'd be interesting to look out for
in the next couple months or year or so. Yeah.
I think it's interesting how throughout this
talk we've really personified this AI. entity,
calling in him, you know, talking about someone's
just put in the chat. Does an AI entity have
a right to free speech though? All these questions
are things that we don't necessarily have the
answers to. And we also don't really know, right,
how involved Advanced UK were in regards to the
content of the videos. They could have commissioned
something, but we're not sure how involved they
were in the actual creation, just involved in
the payment and the use of. It's super interesting
the way that these lines are drawn and how we're
talking about this kind of entity that has had
some political sway. If we fast forward five
years or even 10, what does the Danny Bones playbook
look like for maturity to you? What are your
concerns there? What could this mold into? I
think... even in a year like AI moves so quickly
as does kind of, well, I think especially the
right are very kind of more willing already to
adapt to like newer types of political influence
and like campaigning and they have been much
more successful in engaging and using AI. I think
like what's to say that human influences will
kind of just be totally totally replaced by these
AI avatars who are like compelling, who have
a kind of backstory, who have a believable set
of political and believable and sort of consistent
set of sort of values and, you know, to such
way that, yeah, we have ended up literally personifying
him it. And, you know, obviously that you know,
let's assume AI continues the way it is, we'll
continue to get cheaper, faster, even automated.
There won't really need to be a human in the
loop to, to, to, for that kind of thing. And
I would say, yeah, as we mentioned a bit, like
I think it will, the next frontier might be like
hyper personalizing it and maybe, you know, targeting
becoming, you know, sort of so strong that, you
know, we're all getting a sort of a different
version of an influencer or that we don't even,
you know, that there isn't even a kind of one
influencer that we're seeing kind of explode,
but actually kind of a tailor -made kind of,
yeah, influencer that our algorithm picks off
on. So I think, yeah, we can obviously like look
out for stuff and just keep doing like... keep
doing good journalism and flagging these cases,
but not platforming them if we don't have to.
Absolutely. Somebody just shared that AI generated
content is generally afford the same first amendment
protections as content created by people, corporations
and other legal entities, but it's also subject
to the same established limits on speech in the
US. So it really depends on the country in question,
which is really interesting. And absolutely,
you were saying, report it, flag it where you
see it. But yeah, try not to amplify it so much.
That is an issue that Bellingcat faces every
day as we're often finding deep fakes and things
like that coming through social media, trying
not to amplify the original post. Just as a final
point. What would be your advice to someone who
may be familiar with a case like the Danny Bones
case? What would be your advice for first steps
if somebody, a researcher or a journalist listening
to this has found something similar? I would
say, yeah, do all the forensic digging you can
just on the mainstream platforms. I think the
Danny Bones case was relatively... interesting
in that there was all I kind of needed on those
big mainstream platforms, but I think definitely
take a look on, yeah, go on the telegrams, go
elsewhere, because yeah, what I saw in the investigation
is once they were banned from TikTok, there was
a very swift, ready move to kind of, well, to
X, which again, that's pretty mainstream, but
there's now telegrams. So there is that kind
of like... predictable trajectory of where these
people end up. So I'd say you can maybe get ahead
of the curve there. I think Facebook groups as
well, see which Facebook groups they're in or
maybe if you know the creator behind it, see
what groups their content is being shared in.
I think that's always interesting to get a sense
of both who they're targeting but who is finding
this stuff just interesting organically. I would
say make sure you keep a record of everything.
And if that is, you know, one of these, um, kind
of screen capture type useful, um, nifty tools,
that's great. But if you just have to go through
and manually screen record every single TikTok
then so be it, because I was very, I was very
glad I did that because when the TikTok account
was banned and the story had so much of the TikTok
content. in it that we were referring to. It
was very, it was a relief to have those kind
of there and also then to kind of present the
case as evidence to, you know, the Electoral
Commission, the Advertising Sounds Authority,
the relevant people. It was, we had all the documents,
evidence, we weren't just going off kind of,
you know, memory. Yeah, sadly when one platform
door closes, another platform door opens for
these groups. I shared in the chat, you don't
have to manually save everything. We do have
the Bellingcat auto -archiver, which is a tool
that you can use. It works on most social platforms,
not all, but most. So do have a look at that
and make use of it. There's a really useful guide
to it on our website, which I've just linked
to. Effie, thank you so much for the fantastic
talk today. People have been fascinated by what
you've got to say. If anybody wants to get in
touch with you, maybe they have a lead for you,
maybe they want to just chat to you a little
bit more about the investigation. Where can they
find you? How can they reach out to you? I'm
on LinkedIn, EffieWeb, so E -F -F -I -E -Web.
I think that would be the best place. I'm also
on Blue Sky, although I'm trying to be on memoir.
I'm also on Signal at EFW .40. So either of those
three. Brilliant. I've just linked to your LinkedIn
in the chats. Please do make a point of saving
that. I'll also include it in the description
of this podcast if you're fine with that. But
yeah, make sure that you read Effie's pieces
and the follow -up piece that we're all eager
to read now. And I can't thank you enough for
taking time out to chat today. We'll be back
in two weeks' time with another stage talk. But
for now, thank you everybody for listening. Great.
Thanks, Raleigh. Thank you for listening to the
stage talk. If you'd like to catch a stage talk
live where you you can ask the guest questions,
join the Bellingcat Discord server by visiting
www .discord .gg slash Bellingcat. The music
you've heard is titled Dawn by Newer Self and
is courtesy of Artlist.