AI-Generated 'Welfare Queen' Videos Spread Racist Misinformation About SNAP Benefits

People Are Using Racist 'AI-Slopaganda' to Fuel 'Welfare Queen' Stereotypes

Public Enemy Urge Us to 'Do Something' in Politically-Charged Music Video Shortly before the pause on federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits was enacted on Nov. 1, the TikToks began cropping up: In one video, a Black woman is in a home full of crying babies, screaming, "Because of this government shutdown, they tellin' me I can't use my EBT in November. I got seven kids with seven men...and that's the taxpayers' responsibility." In another, a Black woman rails at a food stand cashier while trying to buy a corn dog with food stamps. One account, which has "Exposing the Food Stampers and section8ers" in its bio, posted a Black woman eating crab legs while asking, "Why are taxpayers mad because we got a chance to enjoy free help and y'all didn't? Thank you for your service!" Another depicted a march with Black attendees chanting, "We want food stamps, we want Section 8." All of the clips were AI concoctions. The pause on SNAP benefits is depriving over 41 million Americans of access to food. After a recent court ruling, President Trump said he will use a $4.65 billion contingency fund to provide relief during the government shutdown. Still, it's substantially less than the standard $8 billion monthly allotment. For now, millions are facing a prolonged period of hunger -- and some are using AI programs to mock their circumstance. In the days leading up to the Nov. 1 shutdown, people were creating clips to push an agenda that women accepting federal aid are lazy and undeserving. Rolling Stone spoke with two scholars who explain that the clips, overwhelmingly targeting Black women, play on decades-old stereotypes used to slander welfare recipients. Closer inspection of the videos reveal telltale signs of generative AI, but some disgusted TikTok creators have shared the clips as if they were real. Last weekend, both Fox News and Newsmax came under fire for reporting on the videos as if they were authentic. (Ironically, Newsmax ran a piece about Fox News' gaffe.) The AI clip that Newsmax aired depicted a white woman with a tattered shirt at a grocery store register angrily belting, "I ain't payin' for none of this shit, I got babies at home that gotta eat. You think I'm just gon' leave my cart here? Hell naw, I ain't payin' nothin', I'm walkin' out with it." The same weekend, Newsmax anchor Rob Schmitt claimed people are using SNAP "to get their nails done, to get their weaves and their hair." (SNAP benefits can only be used to purchase food.) Simone Browne is a professor of Black studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She says the "AI slopaganda" is part of "mimetic warfare" from conservatives, which aims to "get us away from looking at the real political stakes" of the government shutdown via the racist "Welfare Queen" trope. "[The clips] place our attention elsewhere as opposed to looking at things like food insecurity and the crisis around that, and intentionally cutting people's access to healthcare [and] food." In the 1970s, then-presidential hopeful Ronald Reagan coined the term "Welfare Queen" to justify his plan to stifle federal aid programs. During his 1976 presidential campaign, he repeatedly referenced a Chicago woman defrauding the welfare system. Many believe that he was referring to scammer Linda Taylor, who stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from government programs. In Josh Levin's 2013 Slate feature on Taylor (which was later expanded into a book and podcast) the outlet posted an audio snippet of one of Reagan's radio ads where he claimed, "[her] trail extends through 14 states. She has used 127 names, posed as a mother of 14 children one time, seven in another, signed up twice with the same caseworker in four days, and once while on welfare, posed as an open heart surgeon complete with office." Though his claims weren't verified, Reagan stoked conservative fears that Black women were defrauding the welfare system. But Levin revealed that it's unclear if Taylor was even Black. Despite the ambiguity, Reagan used his urban myth to make welfare fraud a hot-button issue en route to an eventual election win in 1980. Once elected, he cut government aid by $140 billion (while increasing defense spending by $181 billion). He used Black women as his avatar for lazy people wasting taxpayer dollars, and conservatives have since followed the same playbook. Janice Gassam Asare is an organizational psychologist and author of Decentering Whiteness in the Workplace: A Guide for Equity and Inclusion. "The 'welfare queen' stereotype persists today despite the fact that more white people are on public assistance than any other group," she explains. Artificial intelligence is billed as a new frontier for society, but it's perpetuating the same regressive pathologies that have been disseminated through popular media. Asare implores us to consider how personal biases influence technological advancements. "Technology is only mirroring the embedded biases that those who programmed and developed the technology hold," she says, adding that TV producers and writers "unknowingly develop shows that replicate biases we see reflected in society" just as much as prejudiced search engine algorithms. In the past, the conservatives looking to extol "welfare queen" ideology may have merely tweeted false stats or unverified stories. But now, they have the digital toolkit to visualize their biases and hope to fool people into believing their agenda. "What I think is really disturbing about this is that the images that I'm seeing from those particular shots are indistinguishable from real Black people on a screen," Browne says of the recent viral clips. "And sometimes the only thing that can let many viewers know this is not a real person, is some glitch in the background." And now, real clips are being confused with AI. Instagram page @NYDrillOfficial posted a clip from the channel News 12 showing New Yorkers lamenting the SNAP shutdown. One clip showed a Black woman alone in front of an establishment, crying about the perilous consequences of the benefits pause. The post resembled the format of the AI posts so closely that some viewers couldn't tell the difference. The post's comments were callous toward her, with fatphobic putdowns and presumptuous assertions that she should have saved her benefits beforehand from people who know nothing about her personal situation. One commenter posted, "I thought this AI smdh," portending a world where people won't know whether real or fake clips are fueling their biases. Browne hopes that before that point, we can organize "mass non-compliance" to push back on generative AI. But the issue may only become more prevalent. Despite OpenAI's generative video platform Sora recently banning users from using Martin Luther after a spate of trivializing deepfakes, there's otherwise not much regulation on racially insensitive AI videos. Sora is a paid service, but there are free or low-cost alternatives that people can use. "Once it becomes more widely available, we will see an explosion of AI slop and more of these racist AI-generated videos," Asare predicts. "I'm not a Luddite by any means," Asare says. "I believe technology can do many amazing things but humans are destructive. I think technology can and will cause more harm than good if we don't put a lid on things now, when this type of technology is still in its relative infancy. If we don't address it now, before we know it, it will be too late and we will look up and ask ourselves, 'How did we get here?'"

This Racist SNAP Video Is Everywhere Online -- And Everyone Should Be Alarmed

Here are the facts, despite what these outrageous videos want you to believe. If you're on social media right now, you may not realize you're being fed racist videos spreading misinformation about the 41 million Americans who get food stamps, or benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). In many of these videos that appear to be generated by the artificial intelligence app Sora, people with SNAP benefits are being demonized as people defrauding the government. Mostly Black women are seen loudly arguing with retail employees over declining payments on electronic benefit transfer (EBT) cards. Some are seen stealing from grocery stores. In others, AI-generated Black women boast about being "set" because of the public assistance they receive due to their children with multiple fathers. HuffPost reached out to OpenAI to ask if this kind of content violates the company's standards for Sora-generated videos, but did not hear back. But even when these AI-generated videos are obviously fake, they are still making people watch and engage with these pernicious stereotypes. "Free ride is over," one top TikTok commenter states after an AI-generated video shows a Black woman having her EBT card declined. "That's why the government is taking [SNAP] away," one commenter states under an AI clip uploaded to YouTube of a Black woman claiming to sell her SNAP benefits for profit. That's the appeal of racist online videos that blur the lines between fact and fiction to confirm people's worst beliefs about people receiving public assistance. What's true or not about SNAP right now is already confusing people. The Trump administration recently backtracked an earlier plan to cut maximum SNAP benefits by 50%, and now said it will only be reduced this month by 35% in the latest chaos emanating from the government shutdown. But viral videos of AI-generated SNAP stereotypes are a growing kind of misinformation that adds to this confusion. The "welfare queen" stereotype of poor people gaming the welfare system to become wealthy originated in the 1970s and 1980s, but it's alive and well online today -- and having wide-ranging effects on us all.