Speaker 1: Is finally opened. Come meet our newest children in Africa.
Speaker 2: A blonde woman stands among smiling children holding lollipops. A
Speaker 2: foundation banner hangs behind them. She announces that a new
Speaker 2: orphanage has opened in Africa.
Speaker 1: Look, they are laughing, singing, dancing, laying together.
Speaker 3: She's finally allowed to be with you.
Speaker 2: But the evidence collected during an ABC investigation suggests that
Speaker 2: the woman in the video isn't real, neither of the
Speaker 2: children or the banner behind them. The scene appears to
Speaker 2: have been generated using artificial intelligence. Millions of people have
Speaker 2: watched an Australian influencer promise food, shelter and hope to
Speaker 2: children some of the world's most critical crisis zones. Now
Speaker 2: her foundation is facing questions about its humanitarian claims, the
Speaker 2: money it's solicited and the damage AI generated appeals could
Speaker 2: due to public trust in charities. I'm Daniel James and
Speaker 2: you're listening to seven AM today ABC News verified journalist
Speaker 2: Matt Martino, the Lily j Foundation and the tangled web
Speaker 2: behind it humanitarian work. It's Thursday, July twenty three. Matt,
Speaker 2: to begin with, tell me how you came across this story.
Speaker 4: So there's an old manage in journalism that the length
Speaker 4: of a tip is in verse two its usefulness too,
Speaker 4: and that really came up in this story. We received
Speaker 4: a foreword tip about Lily Jay, totally anonymous, no link,
Speaker 4: and so we just you know, googled her, looked into
Speaker 4: it and came across her Instagram and her foundation come with.
Speaker 3: Me to visit the orphans today. So I'm like, today
Speaker 3: we gave new shoes, clothes, learning materials, and sweet fill
Speaker 3: the children.
Speaker 4: And the thing that really struck me to begin with
Speaker 4: was this foundation had only really been set up in
Speaker 4: sort of August last year, but it was claiming to
Speaker 4: do all this work in places like Gaza Uganda, Nepal, Philippines,
Speaker 4: su Dan, building mosques and establishing orphanages and bakeries of
Speaker 4: bakery and Gaza Billy Jay.
Speaker 3: It's actually open.
Speaker 4: You know. What we do with ABC News verifies verification journalism,
Speaker 4: so we sort of test whether content we find on
Speaker 4: social media all the time matches up with reality and
Speaker 4: AI is a big part of that. So we started
Speaker 4: to find a lot of inconsistencies with reality on the
Speaker 4: content that Lily Jay was producing.
Speaker 2: Who is Lily j What can you tell us about her.
Speaker 4: So, Lily j is an Australian influencer. She's from Queensland.
Speaker 4: She's documented her conversion to Islam on social media and
Speaker 4: she's garnered quite a large following through hot takes about
Speaker 4: Islam promoting the religion.
Speaker 3: Guys, you will not believe what just happened to me
Speaker 3: at the mosqu today. Today's Friday.
Speaker 2: Happy Jamma everyone.
Speaker 1: I just went to the mosque and I sat after
Speaker 1: Jumat with my Quran and I literally I opened the
Speaker 1: Quran at a random page. I love doing this when
Speaker 1: I'm like, just need a little bit of guidance for
Speaker 1: Mala or something.
Speaker 4: And her main account has a history which goes back
Speaker 4: to twenty twelve, so we know a bit about her.
Speaker 4: We've seen pictures of quite a lavish lifestyle of high
Speaker 4: end jewelry and vacations and luxury locations. We do know
Speaker 4: that at one point she was a singer. We know
Speaker 4: that she was also at one point an aspiring actress.
Speaker 4: So she's worn a few hats, we would say, before
Speaker 4: turning towards being an Instagram influencer and ostensible humanitarian. And
Speaker 4: she's then sort of used that following that she's built
Speaker 4: where she solicits donations from the public, and.
Speaker 2: So you get the tip off and you start looking
Speaker 2: at these videos and posts. What was the first sign
Speaker 2: to you that some of it might have been fake.
Speaker 4: So there are a few videos, but one really jumped
Speaker 4: out of me of an orphanage in Uganda that Lily
Speaker 4: j claim that she had established. So at the beginning
Speaker 4: of this video, Lily Jay appears sort of surrounded by
Speaker 4: African children in front of this sort of orange building.
Speaker 4: In the background there's a banner that says Lily Jay Foundation,
Speaker 4: and underneath that banner is a window. She announces that
Speaker 4: the orphanage is open, and then it cuts to another
Speaker 4: shot of exactly the same location, but in that shot
Speaker 4: the window has actually moved and the banner is gone.
Speaker 3: Did you know there is over one hundred and fifty
Speaker 3: million orphan children in the world right now?
Speaker 4: And then looking through the rest of the video, we
Speaker 4: discovered more instances of things that look like they could
Speaker 4: be AI. So at one point on a worker's T shirt,
Speaker 4: on the back of his T shirt, an extra L
Speaker 4: starts to appear and sort of meld and disappear in
Speaker 4: the Lily Jay Foundation name.
Speaker 3: We bought them new shoes, We washed them, gave them
Speaker 3: new clothes, everything a child needs.
Speaker 4: And at another point there's a shot of a child
Speaker 4: wearing a Lily Jay Foundation T shirt. But the Lily
Speaker 4: Jay Foundation logo is upside down.
Speaker 1: This is only just the beginning in shell life.
Speaker 3: Together, we can make a bigger difference.
Speaker 4: So these are all things that indicate that perhaps AI
Speaker 4: has been involved, because they look like the typical errors
Speaker 4: that AI would make.
Speaker 2: So you see these images that appear to have either
Speaker 2: been generated or manipulated. Which of the foundations claims were
Speaker 2: you simply unable to independently verify on top of that.
Speaker 4: So the Ugandan orphanage, yes, we contacted the Ugandan government
Speaker 4: who confirmed to us that there was no orphanage registered
Speaker 4: under AID and or the name that Lily Jay had
Speaker 4: given to it or her foundation, the Lily Jay Foundation.
Speaker 4: We also contacted other AID organizations in the region and
Speaker 4: they hadn't heard of Lily Jay or this orphanage either.
Speaker 4: In Gaza, the bakery that she claimed to establish, we
Speaker 4: were unable to geolocate that bakery. We contacted AID groups
Speaker 4: there as well, who hadn't heard of it either. You know,
Speaker 4: Gaza's not a huge place, and there's not a huge
Speaker 4: quantity of aid organizations in there. Someone somewhere would have
Speaker 4: heard of a bakery that's feeding a vast quantity of
Speaker 4: children every day, but we were unable to find any
Speaker 4: evidence of it at all.
Speaker 2: The foundation wasn't just posting about its humanitarian work, it
Speaker 2: was also asking for donations to support it. What do
Speaker 2: we know about how much money it was getting in
Speaker 2: where that money was going.
Speaker 4: It's really difficult to quantify how much money might have
Speaker 4: been donated to the foundation. What we do know is
Speaker 4: that Lily Jay has a very large following, but not
Speaker 4: only that, she gets a lot of engagement from what
Speaker 4: appeared to be genuine Muslim on her account, they post
Speaker 4: messages of support, they talk about how they've donated, and
Speaker 4: some of them sort of send comments saying, oh, I
Speaker 4: haven't got my proof of donation yet, are you going
Speaker 4: to send it? Or you know, they talk about how
Speaker 4: they got the proof of the donation. So putting a
Speaker 4: dollar figure on it is really difficult, but I think
Speaker 4: it's safe to say that a substantial number of people
Speaker 4: have donated. It wouldn't be chump change. The curious thing
Speaker 4: about it is that on her website, the foundation actually
Speaker 4: admits that it is not a registered.
Speaker 2: Charity, So what does that mean.
Speaker 4: So the foundation is registered in Australia as a corporation,
Speaker 4: it has directors, but it's not registered with the Australian
Speaker 4: Charities and Not for Profits Commission. That's the government regulator
Speaker 4: in Australia which overseas these charities. They're accountable to the regulator.
Speaker 4: They have to supply transparent reports to them about where
Speaker 4: the money is going and if there's any wrongdoing, the
Speaker 4: regulator can intervene. It means also that if you donate
Speaker 4: to this foundation, you can't tax deduct your donation, so
Speaker 4: there's not a lot of transparency here. We're not able.
Speaker 4: I mean it's a very young foundation, but we're not
Speaker 4: able to look into its reports. No one is. It's
Speaker 4: not accountable to the government when people donate to it.
Speaker 4: There's no pay per trail for where the money is
Speaker 4: actually going, and that's something that I think is really
Speaker 4: important when you're dealing with other people's money to be
Speaker 4: really accountable about how you're spending it.
Speaker 2: Still to can't what established humanitarian groups say about the
Speaker 2: Lily Jay Foundation, but as you've looked further into the foundation.
Speaker 2: What have you been able to find out about the
Speaker 2: woman whose name it uses Lily j Does her name
Speaker 2: appear anywhere in the foundation's corporate records.
Speaker 4: Lily Jay's name does not appear anywhere in the corporate
Speaker 4: records in Australia. There's three directors on those corporate records.
Speaker 4: I did manage to speak to one of those directors,
Speaker 4: a Sired Moson. He confirmed that he was a director
Speaker 4: of the foundation, but then he told me that it
Speaker 4: was very busy where he was at that point and
Speaker 4: that he would call me back and hung up the phone,
Speaker 4: and then he didn't respond to any further inquiries. After
Speaker 4: we spoke to Sired Mosen and put in inquiries with
Speaker 4: the Lily Jay Foundation, things started to disappear. A lot
Speaker 4: of the content from the website started to disappear, and
Speaker 4: the donation's domain taken off the page and replaced with
Speaker 4: a statement about how the aid was still continuing and
Speaker 4: to follow for updates. Additionally, another website which Lily Ja
Speaker 4: was involved in, Real Media Group, which had announced that
Speaker 4: Lily Jay had won a humanitarian award. That website also
Speaker 4: went dark after we inquired about it.
Speaker 2: Since publishing the investigation. Lily Ja has responded publicly tell
Speaker 2: me about what she said.
Speaker 4: So Lily Jay has responded since we published our reporting
Speaker 4: over a couple of very long YouTube videos.
Speaker 3: What you guys don't understand is that this is a
Speaker 3: carefully orchestrated attack against me. Let me tell you the
Speaker 3: facts first, and then you can decide gobs back. I
Speaker 3: don't even know what to say.
Speaker 4: She denied that the orphanage was fake, and she says
Speaker 4: that the bakery itself, that she never said she opened
Speaker 4: a bakery, that she was always just working with partners
Speaker 4: on the ground, and that the bakery was now inaccessible
Speaker 4: and those partners had moved to another part of Gaza.
Speaker 4: She's still working with.
Speaker 3: Them and now we are operating.
Speaker 1: Here is she reading red to the people of Gaza.
Speaker 3: And no, we won't be telling you the location of
Speaker 3: this bakery.
Speaker 4: We will not be telling you the location of this bakery.
Speaker 3: We do not want it at tapped again like the
Speaker 3: first bakery.
Speaker 4: She claimed to call some of the organizations or some
Speaker 4: of the initiatives that she had established live your.
Speaker 3: Camera frozen, ah, here we go, slowly, come high la comsala,
Speaker 3: how are you?
Speaker 4: It's not clear what time of day these really actually occurred,
Speaker 4: or whether they are genuine or staged or anything like that.
Speaker 1: What are we giving today is what are you giving
Speaker 1: today to the children?
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, that looks great, very nice.
Speaker 4: She says that AI was used in her content.
Speaker 3: Short promotional content contained small elements of AI created by
Speaker 3: our marketing team. It was never ever meant to substitute
Speaker 3: any real aid going on. If a video has ME
Speaker 3: in the mid beginning of the video, it gets a
Speaker 3: million views. If it doesn't, it gets like ten thousand views.
Speaker 3: It's just a simple way to get more awareness out there.
Speaker 4: That might be a reasonable explanation if it were true,
Speaker 4: but it's demonstrably false. There is AI all throughout the
Speaker 4: duration of some of the videos that we have investigated.
Speaker 4: But what is really conspicuously absent is an explanation for
Speaker 4: the award that they announced on the website that lily
Speaker 4: j had won. This award doesn't exist outside of lily
Speaker 4: Jay's platforms. The images are AI. You put them through
Speaker 4: open AI's synthid detector, which is an imperceptible watermark that
Speaker 4: open ai adds to its content, and it comes up
Speaker 4: as positive for being generated by open ais tools. So
Speaker 4: they are unequivocally AI. She has not offered an explanation
Speaker 4: as to why she needed to generate AI images and
Speaker 4: give herself a fake award. If you've got genuine humanitarian credentials,
Speaker 4: then the question is why do you feel the need
Speaker 4: to present yourself that way with a fake award. That's
Speaker 4: something that she still hasn't a and I think her
Speaker 4: donors really need answers on that, because if she is
Speaker 4: resorting to that kind of fakery, then it casts a
Speaker 4: paul over any humanitarian work that she claims that she
Speaker 4: might have done.
Speaker 2: You've spoken to established humanitarian groups who have delivered eight
Speaker 2: in some of these areas for a long time. What
Speaker 2: do they say about all this? So the Red Crescent told.
Speaker 4: Us that generally speaking, it had noticed a bit of
Speaker 4: a proliferation in unverified charities operating in recent years. We
Speaker 4: also spoke to Tim Costello, who's the former CEO of
Speaker 4: a World Vision. He basically said that if your charity
Speaker 4: isn't registered with the Australian charities are not for profit Commission,
Speaker 4: do not donate.
Speaker 2: And of those other ad charities that open to those
Speaker 2: humanitarian groups, how worried are they about AI? And its
Speaker 2: usage and making this potentially a broader problem for them
Speaker 2: and for the charitable sector more broadly.
Speaker 4: Well, the thing about charities and stories like this is
Speaker 4: that when they come out, it makes people think twice
Speaker 4: about donating. And so the worry is that, you know,
Speaker 4: with the proliferation of AI, there would be a degradation
Speaker 4: of trust and that would flow through to people not
Speaker 4: wanting to give their money to aid organizations. It's incredibly
Speaker 4: important that people continue to donate because that work that
Speaker 4: they are doing, the genuine humanitarian work, is so important.
Speaker 4: It saves lives and it improves lives, and so it
Speaker 4: is a diabolical problem when it is so easy to
Speaker 4: manipulate and fake genuine aid on the internet. It's a
Speaker 4: problem that's probably only going to continue to get worse
Speaker 4: as these tools become much easier to operate for people.
Speaker 2: Well, Matt, thanks for your work on this. It's fascinating
Speaker 2: stuff and thanks for coming on seven am. Thanks for
Speaker 2: having me on seven am. Did approach lately Jay for
Speaker 2: comment on the claims that have been made. We didn't
Speaker 2: receive a response. Also in the news, Iranian State Television
Speaker 2: has announced to air defenses are being activated in the
Speaker 2: capital Tehran, following the eleventh straight night of US attacks
Speaker 2: on the country. It comes as US President Donald Trump
Speaker 2: stated he has quote no interest in talks with Iran
Speaker 2: at this stage. He suggested that the US could soon
Speaker 2: target a suspect that Uranian and Richmond, while also stating
Speaker 2: US intelligence sees no activity at the facility, and A
Speaker 2: nationwide test of a national emergency warning system will go
Speaker 2: ahead next week despite concerns about the extent of its coverage.
Speaker 2: The test of the new Odds Alert system, which sends
Speaker 2: a ten second alarm to compatible mobile phones in an
Speaker 2: area impacted by an emergency, will be carried out on
Speaker 2: Monday before it goes live in October, but state and
Speaker 2: territory leaders have raised concerns that the alert won't work
Speaker 2: on some older models of mobile phones or Rich Australians
Speaker 2: in remote parts of the country. I'm Daniel James. Thank
Speaker 2: you for listening to seven AM. We'll be back tomorrow.