Hillingdon councillor says Tory AI cartoons of her used racist tropes

A Labour councillor in Hillingdon has called for stronger protection for elected officials after the local Conservatives posted AI-generated caricatures of her on social media. She says the images drew on racist and antisemitic tropes. The Hillingdon Conservative Group rejects that and says the images were meant as satire.

Sital Punja sits on Conservative-run Hillingdon Council and was formerly deputy leader of its Labour group. One image the Hillingdon Conservatives posted on X showed her, a woman of Indian descent, working white male colleagues as puppets. Another showed her running past horse-drawn carts carrying slogans that attacked Labour policies.

What Sital Punja says about the AI images

Ms Punja said she did not accept the satire explanation. “Puppeteering tropes have been used as antisemitic and racist tropes for years,” she said. She added that Labour members receive training on recognising antisemitism and that tropes of this kind appear in it. She said satire should aim at policies, and that the images gave her exaggerated features.

She said the online abuse against her had become severe from July last year and had badly affected her health, and that her race and gender played a part in it. She has been to the police and has had to talk to her children about their safety.

Hillingdon Conservatives say the cartoons were satire

The Conservative group denied the posts were racist, antisemitic or misogynistic. A spokesperson said the puppet image referred to Ms Punja pulling the strings of her colleagues when she was Labour’s deputy leader. The group described the posts as “political satire relating to Councillor Punja’s position and former influence”.

The group said local Labour branches had shared AI-altered pictures of Tory councillors too. It cited posts that placed them beside a gameshow wheel and others that marked local services as “closed”. Ms Punja said those accounts had no connection to her and were separate from the Hillingdon Labour group.

Dr Ben Gidley, of Birkbeck University’s Institute for the Study of Antisemitism, said politicians should take care when using AI to make images. He declined to comment on the Hillingdon dispute itself.