Who is Lily Jay? The Australian influencer accused of using AI in aid videos
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What prompted ABC to investigate the Lily J Foundation and its viral aid videos?
Alhamdulillah, the orphanage is finally open. Come meet our newest children in Africa.
A blonde woman stands among smiling children, holding lollipops. A foundation banner hangs behind them. She announces that a new orphanage has opened in Africa.
Look, they are laughing, singing, dancing, playing together. Kids finally allowed to be kids.
But the evidence collected during an ABC investigation suggests that the woman in the video isn't real. Neither are the children or the banner behind them. The scene appears to have been generated using artificial intelligence. Millions of people have watched an Australian influencer promise food, shelter and hope to children in some of the world's most critical crisis zones. Now, her foundation is facing questions about its humanitarian claims, the money it's solicited and the damage AI-generated appeals could do to public trust in charities. I'm Daniel James and you're listening to 7am. Today, ABC News verified journalist Matt Martino on the Lily J Foundation and the tangled web behind its humanitarian work.
It's Thursday, July 23. Matt, to begin with, tell me how you came across this story.
So there's an old adage in journalism that the length of a tip is inverse to its usefulness to you. And that really came up in this story. We received a four-word tip about Lily J, totally anonymous, no link. And so we just, you know, Googled her and looked into it and came across her Instagram and her foundation.
Come with me to visit the orphans today. Today we gave new shoes, clothes, learning materials and sweets to the children.
And the thing that really struck me to begin with was this foundation had only really been set up in sort of August last year, but it was claiming to do all this work in places like Gaza, Uganda, Nepal, Philippines, Sudan, building mosques and establishing orphanages and bakeries, a bakery in Gaza.
Lily J, it's actually open. What? It's open? Are you serious? Alhamdulillah. Assalamualaikum.
You know, what we do at ABC News Verify is verification journalism. So we sort of test whether content we find on social media all the time matches up with reality. And AI is a big part of that. So we started to find a lot of inconsistencies with reality on the content that Lily J was producing.
Who is Lily J? What can you tell us about her?
So Lily J is an Australian influencer. She's from Queensland. She's documented her conversion to Islam on social media and she's garnered quite a large following through hot takes about Islam promoting the religion.
Guys, you will not believe what just happened to me at the mosque today. Today's Friday, happy Jumu'ah everyone. I just went to the mosque and I sat after Jumu'ah with my Quran and I literally, I opened the Quran at a random page. I love doing this when I'm like, just need a little bit of guidance from Allah or something.
Her main account has a history which goes back to 2012, so we know a bit about her. We've seen pictures of quite a lavish lifestyle of high-end jewellery and vacations and luxury locations. We do know that at one point she was a singer. We know that she was also at one point an aspiring actress. So she's worn a few hats, we would say, before turning towards being an Instagram influencer and ostensible humanitarian. And she's then sort of used that following that she's built where she solicits donations from the public.
And so you get the tip off and you start looking at these videos and posts. What was the first sign to you that some of it might have been Fake.
So there are a few videos, but one really jumped out of me of an orphanage in Uganda that Lily J claimed that she had established. So at the beginning of this video, Lily J appears sort of surrounded by African children in front of this sort of orange building. In the background, there's a banner that says Lily J Foundation, and underneath that banner is a window. She announces that the orphanage is open, and then it cuts to another shot of exactly the same location. But in that shot, the window has actually moved and the banner is gone.
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