A 22-year-old medical student in India says he made thousands of dollars by creating a MAGA AI influencer, describing a strategy that relied on viral content, niche messaging and what he bluntly called an easily persuadable audience.
Speaking to WIRED under a pseudonym, "Sam" said he developed a fictional Instagram persona—Emily Hart, a conservative-leaning nurse—after experimenting with ways to earn money online. He turned to an AI chatbot for guidance, which advised that generic content would fail because he would be "competing with a million other models," and suggested focusing on a specific audience instead.
