{"id":394572,"date":"2026-04-12T10:31:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-12T10:31:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/394572\/"},"modified":"2026-04-12T10:31:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-12T10:31:10","slug":"iran-war-we-spoke-to-the-man-making-lego-style-ai-videos-that-experts-say-are-powerful-propaganda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/394572\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran war: We spoke to the man making Lego-style AI videos that experts say are powerful propaganda"},"content":{"rendered":"

At first glance they look like they could be scenes out of a Lego movie, although more vivid and fast-paced.<\/p>\n

But these viral AI videos inspired by the instantly recognisable Lego aesthetic feature dying children, fighter jets and US President Donald Trump – and are in fact pro-Iran propaganda.<\/p>\n

For our new BBC podcast, Top Comment<\/a>, we spoke to a representative of Explosive Media, one of the key accounts generating these clips. He wanted us to refer to him as Mr Explosive.<\/p>\n

He’s a savvy social media operator who initially denies working for the Iranian government. In previous interviews the outlet has said it is “totally independent”. But upon further questioning, Mr Explosive admits the regime is a “customer” – something he’s never before confirmed publicly. <\/p>\n

The overriding message of these videos is that Iran is resisting what it sees as an almighty global oppressor: the United States.<\/p>\n

The clips are garish and not subtle at all – but that hasn’t put a dent in how vigorously people are sharing and commenting on them.<\/p>\n

In one of the videos, Donald Trump falls through a whirlwind of “Epstein file” documents as rap lyrics tell us “the secrets are leaking, the pressure is rising”.<\/p>\n

In another, George Floyd can be seen under a policeman’s boot as we hear Iran is “standing here for everyone your system ever wronged”.<\/p>\n

“Slopaganda” – coined in an academic paper last year as a play on ‘AI slop’ – is too weak a term to capture how powerful this “highly sophisticated” content is, says leading propaganda expert Dr Emma Briant.<\/p>\n

AI-generated propaganda clips are estimated to have been viewed hundreds of millions of times over the course of the war.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At first glance they look like they could be scenes out of a Lego movie, although more vivid…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":394573,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[220,218,219,61,60,80],"class_list":{"0":"post-394572","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=394572"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394572\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/394573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=394572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=394572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=394572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}