As the Middle East crisis intensifies, social media has been flooded with an unprecedented amount of misleading videos and images claiming to show attacks and military actions by both Israel and Iran.
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However, many of the clips online do not show war at all. Some of the footage has been taken out of context from other countries, some from video games watched by millions of people, and some completely AI-generated.
Here are three viral videos that have racked up hundreds of thousands of views but don’t tell you what they’re about.
“Tel Aviv strike” or Algerian football extravaganza?
One widely shared video on X claims to show an Iranian missile striking the center of Tel Aviv.
The film, which was viewed by more than 4 million people, does not depict Tel Aviv. In fact, this is a video from Algeria that has been debunked many times in the past.
In fact, the video shows soccer fans celebrating the victory of an Algerian club called CR Beliizdad, rather than missiles attacking Israel.
We localized this footage to Al Mokhrani Square in Algiers. The club has celebrated victories in the past by setting off similar fireworks here and there.
Euronews’ fact-checking team, Cube, debunked the same video that claimed to show an Israeli attack on Gaza in 2023.
“US attack on Iran”? No, this is video game footage
Another clip circulating claims to show a US military attack on Iran.
One original version of the clip, which has been viewed more than 5 million times, has a caption in Chinese that reads: “The United States launches powerful F-15 fighter jets in the largest airstrike in modern history.”
But these are actually simulations of the Russian Air Force SU-57 in Arma 3, a military simulation video game with a photorealistic style.
Nevertheless, millions of people have seen this clip along with other video game footage masquerading as legitimate videos from the war.
One clip seen by X’s The Cube had more than 7 million views and claimed to show “Iranian planes vs. US ships.”
The file was shared by Texas Governor Greg Abbott and then deleted. In the end, it turned out to be a clip from the simulation video game War Thunder.
‘Tel Aviv attack’ was generated by AI
One clip was shared widely on X, TikTok, Instagram, Youtube, and Douyin, China’s version of TikTok.
It claims to show how the center of Tel Aviv was attacked by Iranian ballistic missiles, with residential buildings destroyed.
However, the video is generated by AI. The roofs of some buildings are duplicated, the smoke seen in the clip is an unnatural orange color, and no sirens can be heard in the background.
Grok fails to verify posts as X begins crackdown
One of the reasons why so many false and misleading videos are widely circulated, with so many people believing their content to be true, is because of AI chatbots.
Many users turned to xAI’s chatbot, Grok, to verify the alleged Tel Aviv video circulated on X.
However, despite repeated evidence from online experts and fact checkers, Grok failed to tell users that it was generated by AI and often denied it.
In one instance, Grok responded to a user saying, “No, this is not an AI. This is a real photo of today’s Iranian ballistic missile attack on central Israel,” incorrectly citing Reuters, CNN, and Euronews as sources.
As the war continues, X’s head of product Nikita Beer announced that the platform will crack down on AI-generated videos by suspending users from the platform’s creator revenue share if the platform fails to label AI-generated images as synthetic.
Creator revenue share allows users to earn money from X, giving them an account with a wide reach.
He added that Company X identifies AI-generated war-related content through a community notes tool, but verification experts question the effectiveness of community notes given the scale of the content.
Beer said he identified an account posing as a journalist in the Gaza Strip posting a fake video of an airstrike on Tel Aviv, and a user in Pakistan who was using the network of accounts to disseminate AI-generated war videos.
Beer said the user hacked 31 accounts before changing his username to spread the fake footage.
Users may be incentivized to spread fake and misleading images in order to obtain financial incentives.
In active conflicts like this one, fake images can also be used to distort the information space, with one side claiming to have a competitive advantage.
Media ratings site NewsGuard found that videos and images claiming Iran has an advantage in the war against Israel have been viewed more than 21.9 million times.
Many of these posts were spread by pro-Iranian social media users and exaggerated the country’s military capabilities.
