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Do you know who Jessica Foster is? Neither did I until last week, which is surprising because 1) she has amassed 1 million followers on Instagram after starting her account just a few months ago 2) she is a U.S. Army soldier with a look as wholesome and American as apple pie, and 3) she is a huge Trump supporter. With that trifecta, you could assume she would be a star on Fox News, NewsMax, or the Joe Rogan Experience. But no, she is nowhere to be found on those platformsor any major U.S. media outlet for that matter. And that’s because she is a computer-generated mirage designed by an anonymous operator to funnel conservative men toward an OnlyFans page where “she” sells foot fetish pics. [Images: Jessica Foster/Instagram] I came across Foster while reading the Spanish sports media, who covered the AI character after her account posted fake images of her attending an Inter Miami Major League Soccer White House reception alongside Donald Trump and Lionel Messi (she also has appeared in the oval office alongside Cristiano Ronaldo). The stunt triggered a massive wave of coverage across sports outlets in fútbol-obsessed Spain and Latinamerica, which then expanded to TV, other online publications and national newspapers with huge readership like 20 Minutos. Who, or what, is Jessica Foster? The Instagram profile @jessicaa.foster went live on December 14, 2025. In just three months, the account reached more than a million followers. The recipe for this success was fairly simple: The puppet master behind the screen pumped out a constant stream of content around this fictitious, Trump-loving female soldier and built an entire digital lore by letting followers peek into her daily life. We see Jessica posing in army bunks, frolicking with female soldiers, shoeless at the office, and behind an F-22 Raptor. The feed is packed with high-resolution, completely forged photos of her posing with Trump and politicians like Putin and Zelensky; in one, she’s speaking at the Board of Peace ConferenceDonald Trump’s international body created to mediate the Gaza conflict. She even invaded Greenland, because of course all it takes to conquer a country is a Colgate smile. [Screenshot: courtesy of the author] But all this is just bait to pick up right-leaning men straight into adult subscription sites. Under the username @jessicanextdoor, her OnlyFans bio unironically reads: “public servant by day, troublemaker by night i’m new to this don’t be rude please btw i respond to every message but be patient since I’m not a robot haha.” The account pulls in cash primarily by peddling fetish content, specifically foot photography, while farming direct tips from subscribers that can hit over $100 on a single post. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Jessica (@jessicaa.foster) This entire grift operates in direct violation of OnlyFans’ terms of service. The platform’s rules demand that every account must be linked to a verified human being. Any AI generated content, it says, must actually resemble that specific real person and be explicitly tagged with a #AI label. Because of these restrictions, many of these faceless operators are packing up their fake influencers and moving to looser competitor sites like Fanvue. (We sent a request for comment to OnlyFans and will update this article if we hear back.) Over on Instagram, Meta’s policies require that any paid political advertisements prominently disclose the use of AI. For unpaid, organic posts like Foster’s grid, Meta outsources the problem to third-party fact-checkers who can blur, label, or yank the content if they consider it deceptive misinformation. It appears that filtering is not working. Despite successfully duping thousands of users who seemingly left genuine comments of support and affection in her post, the digital illusion wasn’t flawless. Military veterans and commenters in conservative forums like Free Republic spotted the glitches in the rendering. The smoking gun used to debunk her was the name tape on her combat uniform, which displayed her first name (“JESSICA”) instead of the standard military last name. “She acts as a military advisor to the Trump administration on Instagram, but she operates as a foot model on OnlyFans,” says journalist Kat Tenbarge on the left-leaning Courier Youtube channel. [She is] pushing sort of propaganda not just in support of Trump, not just in support of the US military, but it’s also objectifying women in the military.” Tenbarge believes that the Foster account softens and glamorizes and sexualizes this vision of the U.S. military. On the other side of the political spectrum, conservative commentator Ara Rubyan seems to basically agree with Tenbarge. “She was every MAGA bumper sticker rendered in human form, and for her audience, the ‘human’ part was entirely optional […] The Soldier of the Lord was, in the end, just a clever way to sell foot content.” Both are correct in their diagnostic, but they miss the most important point about Jessica Foster. She marks the last national election as the end of reality-anchored campaign news cycles, if such a thing ever existed. Fosters one-million-follower army is the ultimate demonstration that we have reached a predicted and very dangerous era, as the latest generative photo and video AIs have finally shattered our ground truths with perfect synthetic reality indistinguishable from real life. You can even argue that, even without those, we are cooked: Jessica had visible imperfections that were caught by some, but her army of followers didn’t really care much. As Rubyan puts it, “The most dangerous thing about Jessica Foster isnt that shes fake; its how badly a million people needed her to be real.” Indeed. We are not in the post-truth era anymore. This is the “I want to believe” era, and anything that satisfies humans’ existing beliefs and desires will automatically get our brains’ stamp of approval even after learning it is not real. Good night, and good luck, everyone.
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High-level information about the private work of students and staff using ChatGPT Edu at several universities can be viewed by thousands of colleagues across their institutions due to a misunderstanding of what is being shared, according to a University of Oxford researcher who identified the issue. The problem affects Codex Cloud Environments in ChatGPT Edu and exposes the names and some metadata associated with the public and private GitHub repositories that users within a university have connected to their ChatGPT Edu accounts. No private code or repository data was exposed to unauthorized users. Nevertheless, the metadata that is visible can still reveal a meaningful picture of users activity. Anyone at the university, or a large number of people at leastincluding mecan see a number of projects [people have] been working on with ChatGPT, says Luc Rocher, an associate professor at the University of Oxford, who identified the issue and raised it with both the University of Oxford and OpenAI through responsible disclosure. He later approached Fast Company after what he felt was an inadequate response from both. In addition to the projects, Rocher says he could see how many times users interacted with ChatGPT on a given project and when those conversations began. From that metadata, Rocher was able to piece together that an Oxford student was working on an article for submission using OpenAIs toolssomething the student confirmed when Rocher approached them. In terms of the width of different people that can access each others behavioural data, that is quite worrying, says a separate University of Oxford researcher, who was granted anonymity by Fast Company to speak freely about their employer. However, the researcher acknowledges that the data exposure is internal and, while broad, limited in depth. I suspect that might be why the data protection team havent reacted as quickly as if it was a public-facing thing. However, the researcher calls the institutions lack of response nave. They add: There are reasons for researchers to have private repositories. The situation echoes a similar issue previously reported by Fast Company, in which users of OpenAIs standard ChatGPT product were not clearly informed that sharing their conversations could allow those chats to be indexed by search engines. The company initially denied the problem, then removed the feature after backlash. It seems to me it’s a question of a bad default, says Rocher, where users arent made immediately and obviously clear what theyre opting into. An OpenAI spokesperson tells Fast Company: Users are in full control of how their environments are shared. Repository names can be visible to other members of the same organisation only if chosen to be by the workspace owner, and repository contents remain secure. The spokesperson adds: We have spoken with the customer directly about this question and always welcome their feedback. The University of Oxford declined to comment on the record. Fast Company understands Rocher has identified other universitiesincluding at least one in the Middle Eastaffected by the same issue. I think this is something universities need to be made aware of, says Rocher. The situation highlights a broader tension around how AI products are being deployed, experts say. While it is not clear how much data is exposed by default by OpenAI, it is clear that the way that these systems are integrated is making information visible to both the firm and across the organisation that was not visible before, says Michael Veale, professor of technology law and policy at University College London. Veale says that dynamic reflects how AI systems operate. It is a part of a broader trend of AI tools being integrated without accounting for the ways they transform who can see what information, and the difficulty, or even impossibility, of users reasoning what is going on behind the scenes, he says. By definition, AI systems query external services faster than humans can. That mismatch between AI capabilities and human oversight creates risks. Humans already have enormous difficulty keeping up with understanding what information is going where at the best of times, says Veale. Making that faster and more ubiquitous is only going to make that harder, and increase opacity and vulnerability to breaches and attacks in the process.
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Drive an older Buick Regal? You may need to drive it to your nearest dealer. General Motors is recalling certain 2012 and 2013 Buick Regal models because of an issue with the rear suspension toe links that could increase the likelihood of a crash. The recall affects 17,050 Buick passenger cars that were sold or registered in 22 high corrosion states and Washington, D.C., according to the recall notice filed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The recall, submitted on Tuesday, expands on two others that the Detroit-based automaker has filed since late February related to the same issue. Only about 1% of the 17,000-plus vehicles identified may have a defect, which was caused by the Chinese supplier failing to properly apply corrosion protection which could eventually cause the toe link to thin and ultimately fracture. GM noted in the latest recall notice that its not aware of any accidents or injuries that have been associated with its investigation. Notification letters are expected to be mailed to affected car owners in mid-April. The Buick Regal marked the end of an era for the automaker: In 2020, GM discontinued making this model of passenger car amid slumping sales, leaving the brand to focus exclusively on SUVs. RECALL DETAILS As indicated, GMs recall is very limited in scope and only affects 2012 and 2013 model year Buick Regal vehicles. The automaker identified 4,751 affected 2012 Buick Regals and 12,299 affected 2013 Buick Regals, encompassing both the Turbo and GS trim-level vehicles for both model years. Because of the risk of corrosion, GM has identified vehicles that were ever registered in the following states: Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, D.C., West Virginia, or Wisconsin. If you drive one of the affected Buick Regal models, you can take your car to a dealer, which will replace the rear suspension toe link and adjuster fasteners free of charge.
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