How did AI turn propaganda into a powerful weapon?

The wildest clips from the Iranian bombing attack were not captured by pentagonal cameras or CNN crews. They were cooked by Google's AI video maker.

After the Iranian missile barrage of missiles against Israel earlier in the week, fake AI videos begin to spread like nasty rumors, with Tel Aviv and Ben Gurion airports likely becoming hammers.

The scene was very realistic and the strike was realistic, but videos that went viral on the internet were not the case, according to forensic companies.

This is the state of war in 2025 Deepfakes generated by AI, lies generated by chatbots, video game footage It is used to manipulate public perception due to its unprecedented frequency and penetration on social media.

Millions of people went to social media seeking updates as the Iranian responses came brave on Sunday after Israel joined Israel in its most important Western military action against the Islamic Republic after the US attacked Iran's major nuclear sites since the revolution in 1979.

Instead of getting the truth, many have been caught up in a new type of misinformation campaign.

The Iranian Tiktok campaign, which was observed shortly after the Israeli strikes in Iran in 2025, unfolded five categories of AI-generated content.

One video creating the round shows that a normal part of Israel suddenly transformed into a war zone in a back and forth format.

Another batch of fakes shows that a major Tel Aviv airport is being slammed by missiles.

One clip features an El Al Israel Airlines plane engulfed in flames. It's completely computer-generated, but it's still so realistic that it deceives non-tech-savvy people.

The refined ones are phenomenal, reflecting the huge jumps of the classy video generator in recent months as Kling 2.1 Master, Seedream and Google Veo3 generate realistic scenes from images to video features.

Even open source software like WAN 2.1, popular with enthusiasts, utilizes add-ons that create surreal videos and improve quality while avoiding content restrictions imposed by large tech companies.

These political clips have accumulated millions of perspectives across Tiktok, but Instagram, Facebook and X continue to promote non-stop.

For example, the video published today showing an exaggeration of Iran's attack on US bases has been seen over 3 million times on X, while the photo depicting Kandans Owens and Tucker Carlson is a journalist opposed to his involvement in the war, as Muslims have gained over 371,000 views in three days. The Telegram channel pumps out these fakes and pops up faster than the platform can shut down.

The origin of deception

But who is creating all of this?

Of course, there are partisans on both sides, and agents from across the country. The propaganda war is far beyond the Middle East.

The Russian “Pravda” network is contaminating AI assistants, including ChatGPT-4 and Meta chatbots, and turning them into Kremlin mouthpieces.

NewsGuard, a project dedicated to publishing disinformation in American discourse, estimates that the Pravda network's annual publication rate is at least 3.6 million pro-Russia articles.

Last year, the network produced 3.6 million units in 49 countries and used 150 web addresses in multiple languages.

Research shows that Russian networks have adopted a comprehensive strategy to infiltrate AI chatbot training data and deliberately publish false claims.

result? All major chatbots – research has not been named, but parolots Pravda's propaganda.

The Middle Eastern campaign shows that they come from science and customize content by language.

“The content of Arabic and Persian often promotes regional solidarity and anti-Israel sentiment. The Hebrew video focuses on psychological pressure within Israel,” Israel's International Institute for Terrorism (ICT) said in a report.

Another propaganda tactic is leveraging AI content to laugh at Israeli officials, making Iran's top clerics look like heroes.

These videos are clearly not intended to be AI-generated and realistic, and frequently portray scenes of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Donald Trump, depicting scenarios where Khamenei is symbolically wet or dominates both.

Other deepfakes combine fake videos with fake voices to enhance a variety of political agendas.

One video, which attracted over 18 million viewers in a week, features realistic footage of an Iranian military parade with hundreds of missiles and Khamenei's voice threatening America with retaliation.

Iranian state media jumped in. Iranian television ran old wildfire footage from Chile, letting Israeli cities escape as they were on fire.

Other accounts depicting themselves as news channels used fake Iranian AI video mobilizing missiles.

On the other side, Israel chose to ban the media in order to control geopolitical narratives, prompting more disinformation and “dehumanization,” according to experts.

Israel focuses on using AI for a variety of purposes, not political propaganda, but there have also been cases of actors who use AI generated for these purposes, laughing at present and past Ayatollahs, and spreading political messages to expand AI bots to expand AI bots through video of the generation of AI.

The synthetic persona game is the next level. These are more than just fake profile pictures. We are talking about an artificial identity that is completely artificial in nature, with real speech, movement and expression.

There is already a tool that uses advanced technology to convert a single photo and audio clip into a surreal video featuring a composite persona.

According to KBV research data, the virtual influencer market could reach $37.8 billion by 2030. This means there is no video of your favorite social media personality, a political leader saying something to compromise, or a very realistic news show showing scenes from a devastating attack.

Genetic AI has expanded the battlefield across borders and bunkers to all smartphones, every social feed, and every conversation.

If even the president of the most powerful nation in the world can use this technology without consequences, in this new war it is easy to see how we are all combatants and we are all victims.

Edited by Sebastian Sinclair and Josh Quittner