Digital blackface flourishes under Trump and AI: 'The state is bending reality' Late last year, as a US government shutdown cut off the Snap benefits that low-income families rely on for groceries, videos on social media cast the fallout in frantic scenes. "Imma keep it real with you," a Black woman said in a viral TikTok post, "I get over $2,500 a month in stamps. I sell'em, $2,000 worth, for about $1,200-$1,500 cash." Another Black woman ranted about taxpayers' responsibility to her seven children with seven men, and yet another melted down after her food stamps were rejected at a corn-dog counter. Visible watermarks stamped some videos as AI-generated - apparently, too faintly for the racist commentators and hustlers more than happy to believe the frenzy was real.

Joy Reid said the GOP is using Nicki Minaj to put "blackface on MAGA" during appearance on Don Lemon show, launching racially-charged criticism of the rapper's Trump alignment.

Almost as quickly as it began, the music industry may have seen the end of the infamous Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) rapper referred to as "FN Meka", a computer-generated character being widely condemned for appropriating Black culture and saying the N-word. The A.I. rapper was developed by Anthony Martini and Brandon Le, co-founders of Factory New, a Metaverse media company. Some critics claim that the creators who are not Black are trivializing Black art and the Black experience, tantamount to what some are calling "digital Blackface." "In many ways, digital Blackface is an example of … the'digital afterlife of slavery' and Jim Crow, where you have real people and virtual characters engaging in a kind of machine-automated minstrelsy that disrespects and disregards the artistry and production value that goes into the creation of Black culture," Dr. Faithe J. Day, Assistant Professor of Black Studies at the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB), told California Black Media. Media watchers say FN Meka is modeled after rap artists like Lil Pump and Travis Scott and was voiced by real-life rap artist Kyle the Hooligan.

The minstrel show has returned, riding on the apocalyptic horses of artificial intelligence, social media, and NFTs. FN Meka, a rapper created by artificial intelligence who gained TikTok fame through viral short music videos, exists. This fact itself is unfortunate. More unfortunate is that the artificial construct was temporarily signed to Capitol Records. The company dropped FN Meka in response to complaints from Industry Blackout, an activist organization of Black professionals in the entertainment industry, who accused the creators of engaging in racist stereotypes and a modern version of blackface.

Popular AI-powered selfie program FaceApp was forced to pull new filters that allowed users to modify their pictures to look like different races, just hours after it launched it. The app, which initially became famous for its features that let users edit images to look older or younger, or add a smile, launched the new filters around midday on Wednesday. They allowed a user to edit their image to fit one of four categories: Caucasian, Asian, Indian or Black. Users rapidly pointed out that the feature wasn't particularly sensitively handled: technology site The Verge described it as "tantamount to a sort of digital blackface, 'dressing up' as different ethnicities", while TechCruch said the app "seems to be getting a little too focused on races rather than faces". The company initially released a statement arguing that the "ethnicity change filters" were "designed to be equal in all aspects". "They don't have any positive or negative connotations associated with them," the company's chief executive Yaroslav Goncharov said.