Memes, Visions and Sort-of-Facts: The (Strategically) Fuzzy Far-Right Justification of AI Imagery.

Today’s digital public sphere is impacted by the political far-right’s rapid adoption of generative AI imaging technologies. While the public mainstream has raised concern about incitement, misinformation, mistrust and neo-propaganda, this has been generally rejected by far-right users and in the absence of counter-regulation, far-right AI imaging is only on the rise. This study seeks to understand the far-right embrace of AI imaging through the lens of accountability. We ask: how do far-right actors, amidst accountability pressures, legitimize their use of AI imaging? Based on an international media analysis, we identify a limited but varied repertoire of far-right justification strategies in which AI images are simultaneously – and incompatibly – interpreted as humorous memes, ideological visions and ‘sort-of-facts’. This fuzzy and incongruent set of justifications, we argue, has a strategic character as it evokes ambiguous accountability dynamics that impede account-holding. Appraising our findings against literatures on public accountability and persuasion, our analysis further reveals how far-right AI imaging is exploiting aspects of both techno-political ambiguity and explicitness. On one hand, ambiguities around what AI images represent and what responsibilities users carry are leveraged to minimize accountability. On the other hand, AI imaging’s capacity to explicate and trigger emotions is leveraged to boost persuasiveness. With minimal accountability and maximum persuasion, the far-right fusion with AI technology forms a perfect storm for the further normalization of their ideological agenda.