Iran and US Deploy AI to Shape Public Discourse

In the era where conflicts are increasingly fought on digital battlegrounds, the escalating tensions between the U.S., Israel, and Iran have introduced a new dimension to warfare: artificial intelligence-powered propaganda. This marks a significant evolution in how modern conflicts are portrayed and perceived globally.

As American and Israeli forces strike Iran, the information war surrounding these military actions has entered what experts are calling the “AI media age,” creating unprecedented challenges for discerning fact from fiction.

The consequences are both bizarre and concerning. AI chatbots have incorrectly flagged authentic footage of civilian casualties in Iran as fake, while social media users have been deceived by AI-generated personas, including a fictitious female U.S. soldier whose account gained over a million followers on Instagram before being removed.

“The widespread use of artificial intelligence in war propaganda has been expected for some time,” says David Wroe, senior fellow at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. “But the speed at which this content is now being created and pushed out on social media is unprecedented.”

What makes this new form of information warfare particularly effective is its accessibility and scale. “You can do that quickly. You can do it essentially free of charge. You can do it at a massive scale. But you can also use AI to coordinate inauthentic accounts too,” Wroe explains.

Tom Sulston of Digital Rights Watch describes the strategy as “flooding the zone” – a technique pioneered by former Trump strategist Steve Bannon. The approach involves overwhelming audiences with such volume of information, both true and false, that distinguishing reality becomes virtually impossible.

One striking example occurred on March 2, when a fake account impersonating Iran’s Supreme Leader posted video appearing to show Dubai’s Burj Khalifa – the world’s tallest building – in flames. Despite being completely fabricated, the video was shared by hundreds of accounts and garnered thousands of engagements before finally being fact-checked.

Digital investigator Benjamin Strick notes that social media platforms’ engagement-based algorithms inadvertently reward such content: “On Elon Musk’s X and other platforms to a lesser degree, shareable content is accelerated regardless of whether it’s true or false, while fact-checking is a slower, more laborious process.”

The sources of disinformation are varied. Some comes from what Strick calls “useful idiots” – content creators looking to monetize trending topics. More concerning are state-backed actors like the Tehran Times, an Iranian publication aligned with the regime, which has produced numerous AI-generated pieces of disinformation. Russian state media, particularly Russia Today, frequently amplifies this content to international audiences.

A study from Clemson University’s Media Forensics Hub identified at least 62 accounts linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps pretending to be based in Western countries. These accounts systematically amplify divisive content and disinformation aligned with Iranian interests, having analyzed over 60,000 posts on X alone.

“They are designed to exploit regional fault lines to advance Iranian regime interests,” the report concluded. Wroe adds that Iran’s online campaign has received substantial support from both Russian and Chinese-linked accounts.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration’s communication strategy has raised eyebrows among allies and experts. Official White House social media accounts have posted footage of missile strikes edited to resemble video games, with one clip showing a Nintendo Wii-style interface titled “Operation Epic Fury.” Another featured a SpongeBob SquarePants character saying “Do you want to see me do it again?” overlaid on footage of U.S. missiles destroying Iranian military equipment.

“To see this war turned into a memification and gamification kind of contest takes my breath away,” says Catharine Lumby, a media professor at Sydney University.

Wroe believes this approach risks alienating international partners: “They’re making their allies’ stomachs turn. They’re only going to make it harder for NATO allies and allies like Australia to support the war and support operations like keeping the Strait of Hormuz open.”

Iran has responded in kind, producing content like the viral “Lego Trump” videos that mock the U.S. president’s relationship with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu while highlighting purported Iranian military successes.

The jarring contrast between today’s social media-driven conflict messaging and reflections from previous conflicts is stark. In 2016, then-Secretary of State John Kerry spoke about lessons from Vietnam, emphasizing that soldiers should always be treated with dignity, and that transparency in government military operations was essential.

As juvenile memes and AI-generated war content proliferate across social platforms, these hard-earned lessons from America’s past conflicts appear increasingly forgotten in the digital fog of war.