Neo-Nazi content, including Hitler speeches, is being distributed via TikTok’s AI tools

Generative artificial intelligence is reviving the horrific legacy of fanatics including former German dictator Adolf Hitler, while TikTok users are using the app’s AI tools to revive xenophobic speeches from long-dead leaders.

The phenomenon was recently documented in two different reports, one by the nonprofit watchdog group Media Matters for America and another in an investigation by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue and the SITE Intelligence Group, published by the Washington Post. Both opened a small network of accounts that created and distributed translated, AI-synchronized versions of Hitler’s speeches.

According to a study by Media Matters, AI-generated audios have amassed millions of views, including videos that mock the leader or those that turned the audio into a meme. Other accounts appeared to be seriously dedicated to creating and sharing these audios, sometimes with outright anti-Semitic messages. Popular videos using this sound, often stylized with slowed and “reverberating” sound, date back to April 2024, with some of them being mistranslated. After the report was published, TikTok removed a well-known uploader’s account and began redirecting related searches to a “facts about the Holocaust” page that documents Hitler’s murder of millions of civilian Jews, disabled people, political prisoners, LGBTQ+ people, etc with Roma origins.

The Washington Post reported that prominent fascist groups have praised the use of AI to spread bigoted propaganda, citing an increase in “red pill” young people engaging in hate speech and right-wing communities online. Experts told the publication that they fear platform moderation tools, including those on Meta Sites and X, will not be able to keep up with AI-powered distribution.

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In both reports, a range of positive sentiments were noted in the comments sections of the videos. Some users outright praised the historical figure and his policies, pointing out that many of these videos did not display blatant white supremacist dog whistles, raising fears among users that they were unwittingly being radicalized by the content .

Similar attempts to rewrite the legacies of historical figures made their way onto TikTok last year, spurred by AI. In June, a mistakenly leaked internal version of the app’s new digital AI avatar tool — which allowed its users to create advertisements featuring creators’ likenesses — led to the distribution of several AI-generated videos featuring avatars expressing various white supremacist rhetoric recited, including excerpts from My fight and Osama Bin Laden’s “Letter to America.” In 2023, TikTok videos reciting the same bin Laden statement, which has sometimes been linked to white supremacist sentiment, sparked panic across apps as users criticized the speech in light of the siege of Palestinians in Gaza and of Gaza by Israel as an anti-imperial treatise recontextualized the nation’s support for the United States.

In general, watchdog groups have repeatedly documented instances of both domestic and foreign actors using generative AI tools to spread disinformation through the app, including synthetic digital fakes (or “deepfakes”) of political leaders. White supremacist and pro-Nazi accounts have also proliferated on the platform, working with networks on sites like Telegram to boost their content within social media algorithms.

According to a July report from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, TikTok hosts “hundreds” of pro-Nazi accounts that have millions of combined views. The organization says the company did not act quickly enough to stop the spread.