Reform’s Richard Tice caught out using AI on photo of his supporters

On 19 April, scandal-ridden Reform MP Richard Tice posted on social media about his visit to Erdington, and how he feels a change in the political waters. The only problem? His ‘supporters’ appear to have been generated by AI.

Richard Tice and his slop

The far-right MP for Boston and Skegness claimed that:

My team and I knocked on thousands of doors in all weathers, speaking to anyone who would listen, putting everything we had into that campaign. In the end, we received just 293 votes, and it was a tough result to take.

My heart bleeds, it truly does. However, all that had apparently changed for Tice’s latest visit:

Yesterday, I returned to Erdington and everything had changed. The support, the recognition and the mood was something I had never quite seen before.

However, there’s something not quite about those supporters:

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Back in February 2022, @drdavidbull and I spent weeks in Erdington leading a newly rebranded Reform UK. My team and I knocked on thousands of doors in all weathers, speaking to anyone who would listen, putting everything we had into that campaign. In the end, we received just 293… pic.twitter.com/aWBAv6hxAE

— Richard Tice MP (@TiceRichard) April 19, 2026

‘Get Shysmnds Out’

As the context note helpfully points out, the image appears to be an AI fake. All the classic hallmarks are there – the seven-fingered hands, the smeared faces, the text on the signs appearing to read “Get Shysmnds Out”. Some of the more egregious errors are circled here in red:

The Guardian consulted a digital intelligence expert regarding the image. They stated that AI was almost certainly involved:

The faces (especially the mouths) of the figures all have a ‘smear’ to them. The woman in the denim jacket has extra long fingers on her left hand and what appear to be six fingers on her right. The man in the white jacket (fourth from the left) doesn’t appear to be gripping his sign at all.

However, the plot thickens. As reported in Lincolnshire World, Tice is denying that the image was generated by AI:

Reform says the image is a real picture of activities, and was ‘touched up’ to make it brighter and easier to view.

The Local Democracy Reporting Service has been sent what appears to be the original image, which doesn’t have the apparent AI mistakes.

Unfortunately, the image Reform sent to the Local Democracy Reporting Service appears to have been taken on an early-2000s camera phone. Of course, this makes it understandable that Tice would want to spruce it up a bit. Handily, it also makes it difficult to debunk as the original.

However, we would note that the alleged-original still features a sign appearing to levitate in front of one individual’s hands:

But who knows, maybe an enterprising Reform supporter made some little handles for their sign?

This being the case, it’s hard to reach a definitive conclusion on the image. It could be AI-generated, and the dim version is yet another manipulation, or it could be that Richard Tice was simply lazy and failed to notice the mis-spelling of ‘Starmer’.

‘Even their campaigners are fake’

What we do know, however, is that Reform have form for using AI-generated slop to do their lying for them.

For example, Reform’s Darren Grimes – the deputy leader of Durham County Council – used an AI image of a group of South Asian men boarding a bus for a blog post trying to drum up opposition to refugees in the area. He argued that:

The image was obviously for illustrative purposes.

Likewise, Reform’s unsuccessful Gorton and Denton candidate, Matt Goodwin, landed himself in hot water by using AI to ‘write’ a book. The volume was filled with dodgy stats, fake quotes, and AI hallucinations. However, Goodwin tried to claim that the errors were down to his own incompetence.

On the subject of Tice’s post, Green leader Zack Polanski said:

There’s nothing real about the Reform party. Their supposed policies for working people are fake, they spin stories that are fake and now we know even their campaigners are fake.

Alongside AI-generated propaganda and AI-generated facts, Richard Tice’s allegedly AI-generated supporters would fit right in.

Featured image via screengrab

By Alex/Rose Cocker

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