A BBC Panorama and Top Comment podcast investigation has identified multiple Facebook pages operated from Sri Lanka that allegedly produced and amplified AI-generated anti-immigration content aimed at British audiences, Newswire reported.
The investigation singled out two pages in particular. “Great British People,” which presented itself as a Yorkshire-based account, was found through Meta’s transparency tools to be run by an individual in Sri Lanka. A second page, “Britain Today,” which posted AI-generated protest footage and anti-migrant material, was also identified as being operated from Sri Lanka.
The pages published AI-generated videos depicting a dystopian Britain, including fabricated scenes of Sharia law inside Parliament, future UK cities portrayed as decaying, and a range of anti-immigration narratives engineered to attract clicks and comments.
BBC reporters traced an interconnected network of accounts originating from Sri Lanka, the United States, Vietnam and the Maldives that promoted similar material across platforms. Some of the creators told the BBC they posted the content primarily to drive engagement and earn revenue from monetised reach.
Researchers and analysts cited by the investigation cautioned that even when operators are motivated by advertising income, the same material can be absorbed into broader influence campaigns and feed wider disinformation efforts targeting Western democracies.
The BBC report is the first formal investigative corroboration of Sri Lanka-based AI disinformation activity targeting the United Kingdom. It follows a parliamentary warning by UK Labour MP Claire Hughes earlier this week, who flagged a separate page called “Heart of UK” as being run by bots from Sri Lanka. The Panorama findings identify different specific pages and add Meta transparency data as documentary evidence.
The Sri Lankan government has not yet issued a response. Local researchers have previously linked the country’s emerging sovereign Sinhala language model work and a growing pool of AI-content operators to the same digital economy that the BBC probe says is being repurposed for foreign-targeted disinformation.
