Digital Deception: How AI & Tech Alters Narratives in the Iran-Israel War
The war between Israel and Iran has seen different news reports spun by AI.
AI deepfakes, video game footage passed off as real combat, and chatbot-generated falsehoods. These are tech-enabled misinformation currently distorting events in the Israel-Iran conflict, fueling a war of narratives across social media and beyond.
Bending Truths
The crisis may be ongoing but information warfare is unfolding alongside ground combat — sparked by Israel’s strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities and military leadership. These developments underscore a digital crisis in the age of rapidly advancing AI tools that have blurred the lines between truth and fabrication.
The surge in wartime misinformation has exposed an urgent need for stronger detection tools, experts say, as major tech platforms have largely weakened safeguards by scaling back content moderation and reducing reliance on human fact-checkers.
After Iran struck Israel with barrages of missiles last week, AI-generated videos falsely claimed to show damage inflicted on Tel Aviv and Ben Gurion Airport.
The videos were widely shared across Facebook, Instagram and X.
Checking Information
Using a reverse image search, several news outlets and interested parties, such as the AFP, have fact-checked the information and found that the clips were originally posted by a TikTok account that produces AI-generated content.
There has been a “surge in generative AI misinformation, with many tools being leveraged to manipulate public perception, often amplifying divisive or misleading narratives with unprecedented scale and sophistication.
GetReal Security, a US company focused on detecting manipulated media including AI deepfakes, also identified a wave of fabricated videos related to the Israel-Iran conflict. The company linked the visually compelling videos — depicting apocalyptic scenes of war-damaged Israeli aircraft and buildings as well as Iranian missiles mounted on a trailer — to Google’s Veo 3 AI generator, known for hyper-realistic visuals.
The Veo watermark is visible at the bottom of an online video posted by the news outlet Tehran Times, which claims to show “the moment an Iranian missile” struck Tel Aviv. However, users are quick to react and share such videos without verifying the information or watching for clues.
Beyond Social Media
The falsehoods are not restricted to social media. Disinformation watchdog NewsGuard has identified 51 websites that have advanced more than a dozen false claims — ranging from AI-generated photos purporting to show mass destruction in Tel Aviv to fabricated reports of Iran capturing Israeli pilots.
Sources spreading these false narratives include Iranian military-linked Telegram channels and state media sources affiliated with the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB), sanctioned by the US Treasury Department, NewsGuard said.
“We’re seeing a flood of false claims and ordinary Iranians appear to be the core targeted audience,” McKenzie Sadeghi, a researcher with NewsGuard.
Sadeghi described Iranian citizens as “trapped in a sealed information environment,” where state media outlets dominate in a chaotic attempt to “control the narrative.”
Iran itself claimed to be a victim of tech manipulation, with local media reporting that Israel briefly hacked a state television broadcast, airing footage of women’s protests and urging people to take to the streets.
Israel’s military has rejected Iranian media reports claiming its fighter jets were downed over Iran as “fake news.”
Chatbots such as xAI’s Grok, which online users are increasingly turning to for instant fact-checking, falsely identified some of the manipulated visuals as real, researchers said.
