London’s Big Ben has been depicted in a smouldering, dystopian AI-generated vision of the city, daubed with Arabic-style graffiti and surrounded by piles of rubbish and crowds in traditional Islamic attire.

Far-right politicians and leaders are using such AI-generated clips of reimagined European cities to promote racist narratives, falsely claiming that AI is objectively forecasting the future.

Experts told AFP that these videos, which suggest immigrants are “replacing” white populations, can be created quickly using popular AI chatbots, despite built-in safeguards meant to block harmful content.

“AI tools are being exploited to visualise and spread extremist narratives,” said Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate.

In June, British far-right figure Tommy Robinson re-posted a “London in 2050” video on X, attracting over half a million views.

One viewer commented, “Europe in general is doomed.” Robinson has also shared similar AI-generated clips of New York, Milan, and Brussels, and led a far-right march in central London in September, attended by up to 150,000 demonstrators protesting migrant inflows.

“Moderation systems consistently fail across platforms to stop this content from being created and shared,” Ahmed noted, singling out X, owned by Elon Musk, as “very powerful for amplifying hate and disinformation.”

TikTok has banned the creator account responsible for Robinson’s videos, citing repeated promotion of hateful ideology, including conspiracy theories.

However, similar content has gone viral on social media, reposted by Austrian nationalist Martin Sellner and Belgian right-wing parliamentarian Sam van Rooy.

Italian MEP Silvia Sardone, from the right-wing Lega party, shared a dystopian AI vision of Milan in April, asking, “Do we really want this future?” Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders’ Party for Freedom released an AI video titled “Netherlands in 2050,” depicting women in Muslim headscarves and claiming Islam will become the country’s largest religion despite Muslims making up just six percent of the population.

“These videos reinforce harmful stereotypes that can incite violence,” said Beatriz Lopes Buarque, a London School of Economics researcher on digital politics and conspiracy theories. “Mass radicalisation facilitated by AI is worsening,” she added.

Hate is profitable

Using a pseudonym, the creator of the videos reposted by Robinson offers paid courses to teach people how to make their own AI clips, suggesting “conspiracy theories” make a “great” topic to attract clicks.

“The problem is that now we live in a society in which hate is very profitable,” Buarque said.

Racist video creators appear to be based in various countries including Greece and Britain, although they hide their locations.

Their videos are a “visual representation of the great replacement conspiracy theory,” Buarque said.

Popularised by a French writer, this claims Western elites are complicit in eradicating the local population and “replacing” them with immigrants.

“This particular conspiracy theory has often been mentioned as a justification for terrorist attacks,” said Buarque.

Round dates such as 2050 also crop up in a similar “white genocide” conspiracy theory, which has anti-Semitic elements, she added.

AFP digital reporters in Europe asked ChatGPT, GROK, Gemini and VEO 3 to show London and other cities in 2050, but found this generally generated positive images.

Experts, however, said chatbots could be easily guided to create racist images.

None has moderation that “is 100 percent accurate”, said Salvatore Romano, head of research at AI Forensics.

“This… leaves the space for malicious actors to exploit chatbots to produce images like the ones on migrants.”

Marc Owen Jones, an academic specialising in disinformation at Northwestern University’s Qatar campus, found ChatGPT refused to show ethnic groups “in degrading, stereotypical, or dehumanising ways”.

But it agreed to visualise “a bleak, diverse, survivalist London” and then make it “more inclusive, with mosques too”.

The final image shows bearded, ragged men rowing on a rubbish-strewn River Thames, with mosques dominating the skyline.

AFP, along with more than 100 other fact-checking organisations, is paid by TikTok and Facebook parent Meta to verify videos that potentially contain false information.