Social media platform X (formerly Twitter) announced on Tuesday that it would crack down on AI-generated war footage after fake videos of the Iran war spread online as part of a broader fight for influence and attention during the conflict.
Nikita Beer, head of product at X, said the influential platform has identified dozens of accounts spreading fake war videos and will stop paying users who post AI-generated footage of Iran.
“During wartime, it’s important that people have access to authentic information on the ground. With today’s AI technology, it’s easy to create content that misleads people,” Bier wrote in the post.
Rapid advances in AI technology have made it possible for ordinary people with little technical experience to create realistic videos and photos to attract attention or spread false narratives about war.
X users who post “AI-generated videos of armed conflict” without explicitly stating that they were created by AI will be suspended from revenue sharing by the platform’s creators, Beer said. Creator revenue sharing allows eligible users to earn money on X. To qualify, users must have significant reach.
This policy will effectively prevent users from spreading fake war footage.
If a user violates the AI policy a second time, they will be permanently stopped from earning money, Beer said.
X will identify AI content through community notes, a feature that allows users to report falsehoods, or if a video has other signs of AI, Beer said.
Limiting the policy to users who make money means that most X users who do not make money on the platform will not be affected. Beer’s statement also did not mention AI-generated photos or whether X would reduce the spread of fake videos.
Not all misleading images on the platform are generated by AI. Some users have posted video game footage claiming to be war videos, or falsely labeled real images unrelated to the conflict as coming from Iran.
Although X has fewer users than platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok, it is an influential news space. Public servants, government agencies, media outlets, commentators, and reporters share information on the platform to sway public debate.
This week, fake content related to the Iran conflict has exploded on the platform since the war began.
Beer highlighted an AI video posted by a user claiming to be a “journalist from northern Gaza” that claimed to show an airstrike on Tel Aviv, but was actually generated by AI.
Another account claiming to be a Gazan journalist posted another fake video of an airstrike on Tel Aviv, which was viewed millions of times.
Tel Aviv is a stripped-down illusion you’ve never seen. pic.twitter.com/HE3ckjBMti
— Abdulruhman Ismail (@a_abdulruhman) March 3, 2026
“A man was found in Pakistan who was managing 31 accounts posting AI war videos. All were hacked and the username was changed to ‘Iran War Monitor’ or a derivative thereof on February 27,” Beer said. “We’re able to detect this sooner and we’re also eliminating the incentive to do this.”
He said the content was not just anti-Israel.
“We thoroughly investigated the leaked ‘IDF Girl’ account from Pakistan,” he said, adding that in almost all cases, the users posting fake content were people “looking to monetize the game” capitalizing on the attention surrounding the war, and there did not appear to be any political motivations.
Other videos showed a fake Iranian attack on Dubai.
Iran attacks civilian targets? crazy pic.twitter.com/HeA6xpveKC
— Grant Cardone (@GrantCardone) March 2, 2026
Fake photos, including an AI image, purported to show rescue workers recovering the body of Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei.
A photo of the Iranian girl’s body, also created by AI, has been shared widely, including by the UN Special Rapporteur on the Palestinians, Francesca Albanese, and other purported sources, including journalists and elected officials.
Iran’s regime is illiberal and brutal, and its people deserve the freedoms they have fought for for so long. This does not give the US or Israel, whose own policies in Palestine are also illiberal and brutal, the right to bomb Iran, nor does it give the EU leaders the right to mask escalation with hypocrisy. https://t.co/GM1SrxhCPa
— Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur (@FranceskAlbs) March 3, 2026
Albanese defended posting the fake image, saying, “The photo isn’t the problem. The facts are.”
“It can be a drawing or a blank image; that doesn’t change,” she says.
Vanessa Frazier, the United Nations Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, also defended the use of misleading images in X.
A few months ago, Frazier posted a photo of Iranians killed by the Iranian regime, which he said showed the bodies of children killed during strikes at Iranian schools.
“There is no need to criticize the photo to distract from the horror of this attack. The fact remains,” she said.
