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.

A delivery driver posted a TikTok alleging she had been sexually assaulted by a customer. The deepfakes that followed reveal a growing digital blackface problem. When DoorDash delivery driver Livie Rose Henderson posted a video alleging that one of her customers sexually assaulted her in October, it set off a firestorm of reactions. Henderson's TikTok claimed that when she was dropping off a delivery in Oswego, New York, she found a customer's front door wide open and inside, a man on the couch with his pants and underwear pulled down to his ankles. Henderson was dubbed the "DoorDash Girl," and her video accrued tens of millions of views, including some supportive and consoling responses to what she said she had endured on the job as a young woman.

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.