EXTREMISMMeet the AI rapper Funded by a Far-Right Party
The far-right party Advance UK has hired the mystery ‘collective’ behind Danny Bones, a white-nationalist musician and activist – who isn’t real: He is an AI-generated persona.
● Advance UK paid a secretive AI operation to make its political campaign content
● The same group created Danny Bones, a white-nationalist rapper whose videos target Muslims. They have been viewed millions of times
● Experts said this could mark new ground in the use of AI tools for political ends
Danny Bones is a working-class British rapper with a fast-growing online following. His content has attracted millions of views.
He raps about immigration, national identity and a broken Britain. One lyric accuses opponents of trying to “rid you of your heritage”. The video to his most popular song, This Is England, shows him leading a crowd of men carrying St George’s crosses with their fists in the air.
Another shows him in black military gear with the words MASS DEPORTATION UNIT on the back. A third shows an Asian man within a crowd saying to the camera “We are here” before Danny Bones, in a union jack mask, replies “Not for long”. It cuts to a clip of him throwing a man to the ground and deporting him.
At first glance, he looks like a rising rapper courting controversy. Except Danny Bones is not real. He is an AI-generated persona – the front for an anonymous influencer “collective” called the Node Project. We can reveal that some of its Danny Bones content was repurposed for the recent Gorton and Denton byelection campaign by the far-right party Advance UK, which paid the Node Project to produce its main campaign video.
We flagged this to the Electoral Commission, which told us it is “considering the information in line with its remit”. We also shared our findings with social media platforms, prompting TikTok to block the Node Project’s account and Instagram to remove several of the group’s Danny Bones videos.
Matteo Bergamini, who runs the political and media literacy organization Shout Out UK, said: “What you can say with pretty much absolute certainty is that this is the first documented case of a registered party in the UK paying for content from an AI influencer who peddles ‘slopaganda’.”
Rachel Millward, deputy leader of the Green Party, which won the byelection, told us: “The rise of far-right AI-generated content is corrosive to democracy and puts politicians’ safety at risk.”
