AI disinformation in the Israel-Iran conflict is a crisis with no comparison

Since Israel and Iran resorted to full-on assaults last week, a lot of false information has been spread online using AI. Research conducted by BBC Verify found several videos that bragged about Iran’s military power, along with fake videos that claimed to show the effects of attacks on Israeli targets. 

Most of the posts reportedly attempted to amplify the effects of Tehran’s attacks. The three most-watched fake videos have collectively amassed over 100 million views across multiple platforms.

Online, pro-Israel accounts have also spread false information, mostly by sharing old videos of protests and gatherings in Iran. They show more people protesting against the government and supporting Israel’s military campaign.

People make money off Middle East tensions

One group that analyses open-source images said the amount of false information online was “astonishing”. They said some people were trying to make money off the conflict by spreading false information online to get attention.

“We are seeing everything from unrelated footage from Pakistan, to recycled videos from the October 2024 strikes—some of which have amassed over 20 million views—as well as game clips and AI-generated content being passed off as real events,” Geoconfirmed, the online verification group, wrote on X.

As a result, some accounts have gained many followers and become “super-spreaders” of false information.

Daily Iran Military, a pro-Iranian account that doesn’t seem to have any ties to the government in Tehran, gained 1.4 million followers on X in less than a week, up from just over 700,000 by June 19.

Emmanuelle Saliba, Chief Investigative Officer at the research group Get Real, said that it is  “the first time we’ve seen generative AI be used at scale during a conflict.” 

Israel launched strikes in Iran on 13 June, leading to several rounds of Iranian missile and drone attacks on Israel.

Fake reports that Israeli F-35 fighter jets were destroyed.

AI fakes have also focused on reports that Israeli F-35 fighter jets were destroyed. The F-35 is a high-tech US-made plane that can attack targets on the ground and in the air. The head of the Alethea analyst group, Lisa Kaplan, told BBC Verify that if the clips were real, Iran would have sunk 15% of Israel’s fleet of jets.

There still isn’t proof that any video of F-35s being shot down is real.

Many people are interested in F-35s, according to Ms. Kaplan. This is because of a group of accounts that Alethea has previously linked to Russian operations that affect people.

She said that Russian efforts to influence have recently changed from trying to weaken support for the war in Ukraine to spreading questions about the power of Western weapons, especially American ones.

Musk’s Grok found misleading X users

A lot of the disinformation that BBC Verify looked at was shared on X, and users often use the platform’s AI robot, Grok, to check the veracity of posts.

There were times when Grok claimed that the AI videos were real. One of these videos showed a never-ending stream of trucks carrying ballistic weapons coming out of a mountainside complex.  Ms. Saliba said that the rocks in the video moving independently were a clear sign of AI content.

Getting ready for tonight's show pic.twitter.com/ArxNGaWjzQ

— Iran Updates (@hehe_samir) June 18, 2025

But in answer to X users, Grok said repeatedly that the video was real and cited news stories from Newsweek and Reuters as proof. “Check trusted news for more information,” the chatbot said at the end of several texts.

TikTok told BBC Verify that it actively enforces community rules “which prohibit inaccurate, misleading, or false content” and that it works with outside fact-checkers to “verify misleading content.” However, Meta, the owner of Instagram, did not respond when asked for a statement.

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