Foster’s viral takeoff highlights an increasingly prevalent strategy for winning online attention.
A slew of right-wing accounts, peddling patriotism mixed with soft-core pornography, use fake women and convincing imagery to grab viewers across a distracted internet, monetise their interest and score political points.
Accounts showing AI-generated women masquerading as Trump-supporting soldiers, truckers and police officers have built surging audiences on platforms such as TikTok, Instagram and X, where thousands of commenters have offered responses suggesting they believe the women are real.
A version of the strategy has also played out in recent weeks beyond the US.
Hundreds of AI-generated videos showing Iranian female soldiers and pilots cheering on the nation’s military have proliferated online, as the BBC first reported. One telltale sign they’re fake: Iran bans women from combat roles.
Sam Gregory, executive director of Witness, a video-advocacy group that researches deepfakes, said Foster exemplifies how deceptive AI video generators can be.
AI advances have made it easier for creators to generate a consistent fake character for use across multiple photos or videos and to situate the character next to real public figures, making it seem like the character is at the centre of actual events.
By applying political trappings and current events to these characters’ fake lives, their creators probably hope to maximise their virality and stand out in an online crowd, Gregory said.
Once they’ve got people’s attention, the creators can – as in Foster’s case – shunt them to a paid platform, where the user is told to pay up for more lurid scenes.
Foster is “the apotheosis of what MAGA fantasises 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 unknown person who runs the Foster account did not respond to requests for comment. After the Washington Post sought comment, the account posted a new photo showing Foster cruising aboard a military vessel in the Strait of Hormuz.
An Army spokeswoman said officials there could find no records of Foster.
Instagram removed Foster’s account for violating its policies on Friday, a Meta spokesperson said. The White House 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”.
More than 50 photos and videos have followed in the months since, revealing a busy series of meetings with first lady Melania Trump, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Russian President Vladimir Putin and soccer 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 moments were extraordinarily outlandish, but even the details offered their own giveaways. The insignia on her combat and service uniforms suggest a muddled mix of qualifications, indicating that she is either a staff sergeant, a Ranger school graduate or a one-star general.
In one photo, she is depicted giving a speech to the “Border of Peace Conference”, a bungled version of Trump’s new Board of Peace.
In another, in which she is shown holding a captive Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela’s former president, her uniform lists her first name where it should list her last.
Thousands of users have flocked to her comment sections nevertheless.
Referring to Foster, the Silicon Valley investor Justine Moore, of the 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 have received a total of more than 100,000 comments, many from accounts with men in their profile photos. Some called her out as AI, though many just 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 includes galleries titled “training”, “U.S.”, and “dailyarmy”, originally linked to an account on OnlyFans, a subscription marketplace popular with porn creators. A spokesperson for OnlyFans said the account was removed for breaking its rules, which require that all creators be verified (human) adults.
Foster now links viewers to her account on a smaller OnlyFans competitor, Fanvue, that allows AI models and labels them as “generated or enhanced”.
Her account there, “jessicanextdoor,” says its location is Fort Bragg, the giant military base in North Carolina that is home to the Army’s Special Operations Command, and describes Foster as a “public servant by day, troublemaker by night🤍”.
Many influencers use this style of sales-funnel technique to convert free viewers into paying customers for more explicit, locked-away content. Fanvue declined to share information about the account, which invites 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.
Mischief-makers don’t need AI to deceive people on the internet.
Real women have had their photos swiped online and used to distribute political messaging they didn’t endorse. In 2023, a Trump supporter was warped into a left-wing “rage bait” account. And in 2024, European influencers were made to appear as MAGA diehards.
But Joan Donovan, an assistant professor at Boston University who studies media manipulation, said AI has helped such accounts multiply because they are easy to create, endlessly customisable and offer creators a clear path to moneymaking. The accounts’ political sheen also helps ensure the images end up appearing in people’s news feeds.
The biggest risk, Donovan said, is that the grift strategy can be transformed into information warfare, with the anonymously run accounts deployed as a kind of “bot army” that can distribute propaganda, disinformation or wartime talking points en masse.
“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.”
– Alex Horton contributed to this report.
Sign up to Herald Premium Editor’s Picks, delivered straight to your inbox every Friday. Editor-in-Chief Murray Kirkness picks the week’s best features, interviews and investigations. Sign up for Herald Premium here.
