An Indian medical student has reportedly made a huge amount of money from pro-Republican, MAGA (Make America Great Again) supporters using AI-generated images of a woman with blonde features. The student who uses a pseudonym ‘Sam’ to conceal his identity told WIRED that he came up with the idea while exploring options to make money to fund his education.
Sam, reportedly a surgeon in traning, had been receiving financial help from his parents, but a large chunk of that was going into exam-related expenses. He planned to go to the US after completing his education and had been saving up for that, but he was also looking for extra income.
Sam tried various ways to make money, including YouTube shorts and selling notes to other medical students, but he didn’t have much success. One day, while scrolling through Instagram, he came up with the idea of creating images of a young, attractive, scantily dressed woman and selling them online. He used Google Gemini’s Nano Banana Pro to create pictures of attractive women wearing revealing outfits and posted them online, but the content did not get much traction.
Google Gemini suggested to Sam a “cheat code”
Failing to get success, Sam reportedly turned to Google Gemini for advice. The chatbot told him that the kind of content he was posting had a lot of competition. Sam gave the chatbot some options to make his AI-generated model stand out, out of which the chatbot selected the “MAGA/conservative niche”, referring to it as a “cheat code”. Furthermore, the chatbot said that a model with MAGA ideology would appeal to “the conservative audience (especially older men in the US) who often have higher disposable income and are more loyal.”
That’s how, in January 2025, Sam created ‘Emily Hart’, a blonde registered nurse who looked like Hollywood actress Jennifer Lawrence. He created an Instagram account @emily_hart.nurse and posted images of Emily Hart there, showing her ice fishing, drinking Coors Light, and shooting off a few rounds at the rifle range. He posted her images with captions such as “If you want a reason to unfollow: Christ is king, abortion is murder, and all illegals must be deported”, and “POV: You were assigned intelligent at birth, but you identify as liberal <clown emoji>.”
Sam studied the MAGA ideology to attract its supporters
According to Sam, the Instagram account’s reach shot up in a short period of time. He started earning as much as a few thousand dollars a month through a combination of Fanvue subscriptions and sales of MAGA-themed T-shirts, including designs with slogans like “PTSD: Pretty Tired of Stupid Democrats.” Since Sam never lived in the US, he spent a considerable time understanding the MAGA ideology. After getting a hold of the ideology, he started regularly posting captions that aligned with the ideology, along with the pictures of Emily Hart. “Every day I’d write something pro-Christian, pro-Second Amendment, pro-life, anti-abortion, anti-woke, and anti-immigration,” Sam told WIRED.
“Every Reel I posted was getting 3 million views, 5 million views, 10 million views. The algorithm loved it. I was spending maybe 30 to 50 minutes of my day, and I was making good money for a medical student. In India, even in professional jobs, you can’t make this amount of money. I haven’t seen an easier way to make money online,” he added. Sam, who described the MAGA supporters as “super dumb”, said that he generated Emily Hart’s revealing photos using Grok AI and posted them on Fanvue, where Emily’s fans sent him money in exchange for exclusive content.
Emily Harts’ account on Instagram, which requires disclosure of AI content, was officially banned in February for “fraudulent activity”. Sam, who did not plan to keep posting on the account for long, has also moved on to focus on his studies.
