{"id":548885,"date":"2026-03-20T11:35:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-20T11:35:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/548885\/"},"modified":"2026-03-20T11:35:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-20T11:35:11","slug":"irans-ai-slop-war-propaganda-is-working-surprisingly-well","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/548885\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran\u2019s AI-slop war propaganda is working surprisingly well"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Mourners participate in a procession during the funeral of Iran’s national security chief Ali Larijani, Basij commander Gholamreza Soleimani and Iranian sailors killed in recent strikes, in Tehran on March 18, 2026.ATTA KENARE\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Gus Carlson is a U.S.-based columnist for The Globe and Mail.<\/p>\n

Propaganda has been an integral part of war strategy for a long time \u2013 from Joseph Goebbels\u2019s use of film and radio to promote Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party doctrine in the Second World War to Hanoi Hannah\u2019s daily radio broadcasts of anti-American commentary and songs meant to demoralize U.S. troops in Vietnam. <\/p>\n

Now, Iran<\/a> has embraced new technology for its own disinformation push and is using artificial intelligence<\/a> to create a false narrative that Iran is winning the war with the U.S. and Israel. <\/p>\n

The question around the new-tech propaganda is this: Does anyone believe it? The answer is, it probably depends on what side of the conflict you are on.<\/p>\n

While Iran has come a long way from choppy videos with soundtracks comically out of sync with the images that were circulated during the Twelve-Day War in June, 2025, the country\u2019s latest AI propaganda efforts are still embarrassingly flawed.<\/p>\n

Lawrence Martin: War is back, but \u2018MAD\u2019 will save us from the worst of it<\/a><\/p>\n

Exhibit A is a recent AI-generated video spread by Iranian sources suggesting Israel\u2019s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was dead. The video was widely distributed on social media and picked up by Iranian media outlets across the country.<\/p>\n

But even a cursory look at the images by non-experts revealed it was hardly authentic. Mr. Netanyahu was shown with six fingers on one hand, an obvious sign that the images were AI-generated.<\/p>\n

To make fun of the farce \u2013 and prove the effort false \u2013 a few days later Mr. Netanyahu posted a proof-of-life selfie<\/a> on social media showing him at a Jerusalem coffee shop, smiling with a cup of coffee in one hand and holding up his other hand to the camera.<\/p>\n

The image proved two things: Mr. Netanyahu was very much alive, and he had the regulation number of fingers.<\/p>\n

The video was posted on Benjamin Netanyahu’s Facebook page, responding to viral posts claiming he’d been killed, which were followed by posts speculating that footage of him had been AI edited because he looked to have six fingers.<\/p>\n

The Associated Press<\/p>\n

In another instance, Iranian state media posted images showing a hale and hearty new Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, after reports circulated that he was too injured to make a public appearance. The photos were also posted to his X account. The BBC later reported that the photos were AI-altered and could not be considered reliable evidence about the leader\u2019s state of health.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey can\u2019t win on the battlefield, so they\u2019re going to try and win through AI and through a global narrative,\u201d Bridget Bean, former acting director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said of the Iranian efforts in a Fox News interview last week. \u201cTheir goal is to weaken our will, our resolve and to really push a narrative that is not true.\u201d<\/p>\n

While those two initiatives backfired on Iran, AI-generated propaganda, when done well, could be an incredibly powerful tool for social and cultural manipulation.<\/p>\n

Tony Keller: Iran has a strategy. Does Trump?<\/a><\/p>\n

And that\u2019s a critical part of war. Maintaining the morale of the population is a pivotal component of keeping and exercising power. So is damaging the morale of the attackers, especially in an extended conflict that may eventually entail boots on the ground.<\/p>\n

In the same way Hanoi Hannah tried to demoralize enemy troops by reading daily lists of American G.I.\u2019s killed and imprisoned, telling them the war was unjust and immoral, and playing U.S. anti-war pop songs, even flawed images of a dead Israeli prime minister and a healthy Iranian supreme leader could boost the morale of Iranians under attack.<\/p>\n

And in the same way the Goebbels campaigns depicting the might of the Third Reich and the resolve of its leader created a frenzy of pro-Nazi sentiment across Germany, propaganda painting a rosy picture of Iranian victory over its attackers, no matter how untrue, is a powerful motivational tonic. <\/p>\n

Konrad Yakabuski: The Iran war could determine Trump\u2019s successor in 2028<\/a><\/p>\n

When bombs are falling and hope seems lost, it\u2019s not a stretch to believe that Iranians would cling to such images as life preservers, even if they were eventually proved false.<\/p>\n

Besides, Ms. Bean said, people scrolling quickly on their hand-held phones might not notice that something is wonky about the regime\u2019s AI-generated content, and she urged people to be \u201ccareful about what\u2019s happening.\u201d <\/p>\n

P.T. Barnum suggested there\u2019s a sucker born every minute, a well-worn adage about the gullibility of people. When the chips are down, as they are in Iran, maybe people are willing suckers, eager to grab onto positive messages and images no matter how obviously flawed they may be. In wartime, altered reality can become a useful reality.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Mourners participate in a procession during the funeral of Iran’s national security chief…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":548886,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[62,901,276,277,888,902,879,877,903,49,48,876,895,896,891,878,875,46,549,295,894,887,914,880,881,893,889,890,884,904,885,909,910,912,907,911,905,908,882,898,899,714,897,906,865,61,900,892,886,883,913],"class_list":["post-548885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-alberta","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-arts-news","tag-bc","tag-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news-video","tag-british-columbia","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canada-news","tag-canada-sports","tag-canada-sports-news","tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","tag-canadian-breaking-news","tag-canadian-news","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-environment","tag-federal-government","tag-foreign-news","tag-globe-and-mail","tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","tag-government","tag-life-news","tag-lifestyle","tag-local-news","tag-manitoba","tag-national-news","tag-new-brunswick","tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","tag-northwest-territories","tag-nova-scotia","tag-nunavut","tag-ontario","tag-pei","tag-photos","tag-political-news","tag-political-opinion","tag-politics","tag-politics-news","tag-quebec","tag-sports-news","tag-technology","tag-travel","tag-trudeau","tag-us-news","tag-world-news","tag-yukon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=548885"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548885\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/548886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=548885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=548885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=548885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}