People are swooning over an Army woman named Jessica Foster who was seen posing with an F-22 Raptor, dressed in camouflage in desert settings, and even appearing alongside Donald Trump. People are going gaga over the woman, but the reality is different. Experts said there was no public record of Foster’s military service and that the account, despite not being labelled AI, contained many indicators that she was fake. Between many of her pro-Trump posts, Foster also prominently displayed her feet, Washington Post reported.Foster’s viral rise highlighted what researchers described as a growing strategy to win online attention, with right-wing accounts mixing patriotism and soft-core pornography using fake women and convincing imagery to attract viewers, monetise interest and score political points.Accounts showing AI-generated women posing as Trump-supporting soldiers, truckers and police officers built large audiences on TikTok, Instagram and X, where thousands of commenters posted responses suggesting they believed the women were real.A similar pattern played out in recent weeks beyond the United States, with hundreds of AI-generated videos showing Iranian female soldiers and pilots cheering on the nation’s military spreading online, as the BBC first reported. One sign they were fake was that Iran bans women from combat roles.Sam Gregory, executive director of Witness, a video-advocacy group that researches deepfakes, said Foster exemplified how deceptive AI video generators can be. He said AI advances made it easier to create a consistent fake character across multiple photos or videos and place the character next to real public figures, making it appear the character was central to real events.By applying political trappings and current events to these characters’ fake lives, their creators probably hoped to maximise virality and stand out online, Gregory said. He said that once creators gained attention, they could, as in Foster’s case, direct users to a paid platform where they were asked to pay for more explicit scenes.Foster is “the apotheosis of what MAGA fantasizes about, all packed into one channel, but it’s obviously AI: There’s no provenance to the images, no history around her, visible glitches,” he said. “There’s any number of real and unreal beautiful women online, but having one that’s so proximate to power, around the big events of the day, has a different cachet.”The person running the Foster account did not respond to requests for comment. After The Washington Post sought comment, the account on Wednesday posted a new photo showing Foster cruising aboard a military vessel in the Strait of Hormuz.An Army spokeswoman said officials could find no records of Foster. The White House and Meta, which owns Instagram, did not respond to requests for comment.Foster’s first video, posted on Thanksgiving, showed the blue-eyed woman sitting beneath an American flag in a tight shirt and included a caption asking for comments from every “straight guy that likes a American army girl.”In this AI-generated image, the fictional Foster is seen with Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. (AI-generated image obtained by The Washington Post)In this AI-generated photo, Foster is seen with Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. (AI-generated image obtained by The Washington Post)More than 50 photos and videos followed in the months since, showing meetings with first lady Melania Trump, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Russian President Vladimir Putin and football star Lionel Messi. Between those moments, Foster made bawdy jokes, gave speeches and joined her female comrades for pillow fights.“Best job in the world,” said a caption with a video last month showing Foster in a helmet and a tactical vest.The posts were described as outlandish, and details in the imagery provided clues, including insignia on her combat and service uniforms that suggested a muddled mix of qualifications, indicating she was either a staff sergeant, a Ranger school graduate or a one-star general.In one photo, she was depicted giving a speech to the “Border of Peace Conference,” described as a bungled version of Trump’s new Board of Peace. In another, she was shown holding a captive Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s former president, and her uniform listed her first name where it should list her last.Thousands of users still posted in her comment sections. Referring to Foster, Silicon Valley investor Justine Moore of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz said in an X post, “I’m genuinely floored by how many dudes are following influencers that are clearly AI.”Foster’s posts received more than 100,000 comments, many from accounts with men in their profile photos. Some users called her out as AI, while many celebrated her looks, sent her heart-eyes emojis or cheered her on.The verified Instagram account of a Brazilian transportation official liked most of her photos and told Foster she was “linda,” or beautiful. Another user asked, “Why do you NEVER reply?” The accounts did not respond to requests for comment.Foster’s Instagram, which included galleries titled “training,” “U.S.,” and “dailyarmy,” originally linked to an account on OnlyFans, a subscription marketplace popular with porn creators. An OnlyFans spokesperson said the account was removed for breaking rules requiring all creators to be verified human adults.In this AI-generated image, Foster is seen in Greenland with two other fake soldiers. (AI-generated image obtained by The Washington Post)Foster later linked viewers to an account on Fanvue, a smaller OnlyFans competitor that allows AI models and labels them as “generated or enhanced.”Her account there, “jessicanextdoor,” listed its location as Fort Bragg, the military base in North Carolina that is home to the Army’s Special Operations Command, and described Foster as a “public servant by day, troublemaker by night??.”The report described the approach as a sales-funnel technique used by influencers to convert free viewers into paying customers for more explicit content. Fanvue declined to share information about the account, which invited viewers to subscribe for “special stuff.”“Btw i respond to every message but be patient since i am not a robot,” the account said, with a winky-face emoji. Within days of its creation, the account received more than 10,000 likes.The report said deception online did not require AI. It cited cases where real women had their photos taken and used to distribute political messaging they did not endorse, including a 2023 case in which a Trump supporter was warped into a left-wing “rage bait” account, and a 2024 case in which European influencers were made to appear as MAGA supporters.Joan Donovan, an assistant professor at Boston University who studies media manipulation, said AI helped such accounts multiply because they were easy to create, endlessly customisable and offered a clear path to making money. She said the political sheen also helped ensure the images appeared in people’s news feeds.Donovan said the biggest risk was that the strategy could be transformed into information warfare, with anonymously run accounts deployed as a “bot army” to distribute propaganda, disinformation or wartime talking points at scale.“The danger of this is that we’re moving toward a society of the unreal,” Donovan said. “It’s one way to get political messaging across, and it’s effective. We don’t even know if selling feet pics is Jessica Foster’s final form.”
