Danny Bones is a young, white working-class rapper who has a song with 500,000 Spotify streams, 29,000 monthly listeners and three million views on TikTok, YouTube and Instagram.

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.

The problem is that Danny Bones isn’t real. He is an AI character created by a shadowy group called the Node Project, which used artificial intelligence to build the ‘authentic white lad rapper’.

He was designed to seem more trustworthy to an audience than a politician or a mainstream news outlet, giving their grievances a face and a working-class voice.

Bones’s songs and videos are filled with grievance, far-right symbolism and references to “mass migration”.

The character is part of a disturbing new trend in which in the far-right is using AI to sow anti-immigrant sentiment.

Australians are also being misled by AI-generated deepfakes designed to divide political opinion and drive engagement on social media.

An investigation published by the ABC recently found a raft of foreign-run Facebook accounts sharing misleading and AI-generated images of Australian politicians.

The report analysed around 370 images posted by 14 accounts over a single week and found that more than half featured One Nation Leader Pauline Hanson – typically portrayed positively as a crusader battling her political opponents.

Other frequent subjects included Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who fared less favourably.

A new right-wing British political party considered “too extreme” even by members of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK is also embracing AI to spread anti-immigration rhetoric.

The new party, Advance UK, recently released a major campaign video that draws heavily on AI-generated imagery and incorporates music and lyrics from a Danny Bones song.

The Advance video was shown at Advance UK’s February conference, where the party launched its culture and immigration policies.

It presents patriotic images from British history: Anglo-Saxon warriors, soldiers fighting in the second world war, the Beatles crossing Abbey Road.

“This is Britain, where freedom was written. Built in defiance, paid for in blood,” says a deep-voiced narrator.

The soundtrack is the instrumental from a Danny Bones track, and the line about “where freedom was written” comes from the lyrics of another. Reports say the video was produced by the Node Project.