ceasefire<\/a> raised hopes on Wednesday of halting hostilities, but many issues remained unresolved.<\/p>\n\u201cThis is a propaganda war for them,\u201d Neil Lavie-Driver, an AI researcher at the University of Cambridge, said, referring to Iran. \u201cTheir goal is to sow enough discontent with the conflict as to eventually force the West to cave in, so it is massively important to them.\u201d<\/p>\n
It’s not the first time memes have been used in a conflict, and they have evolved to include AI images in recent years. AI imagery bombarded Ukrainians after the Russian invasion in 2022. Last year, the term \u201cAI slop\u201d became widely used to describe the glut of imperfect images posted online during the Israel-Iran war to try to destroy the country\u2019s nuclear programme.<\/p>\n
In the conflict that began on February 28 with joint US-Israel strikes, the memes have used well-honed cartoons that lambast US officials.<\/p>\n
The memes are steeped in American culture<\/p>\n
The memes are fluent not just in English but in American culture and trolling. Published on various social platforms, they are racking up millions of views \u2013 although it\u2019s not clear how much influence they have had.<\/p>\n
They have portrayed US President Donald Trump as old, out of step and internationally isolated. They have referenced bruising on the back of Trump’s right hand that prompted speculation about his health; infighting in Trump’s MAGA base; and US Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth\u2019s fiery confirmation hearing, among other things.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re using popular culture against the No. 1 pop culture country, the United States,\u201d said Nancy Snow, a scholar who has written more than a dozen books on propaganda.<\/p>\n
The pro-Iran images circulating online include a series that uses the style of the \u201cLego\u201d animated movies. In one, an Iranian military commander raps, \u201cYou thought you ran the globe, sitting on your throne. Now we turning every base into a bed of stone,\u201d as Trump falls into a bullseye built of \u201cEpstein files”, the US government\u2019s investigative records on disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.<\/p>\n
Analysts believe Iranian government involvement<\/p>\n
The animations show levels of sophistication and internet access that indicate ties to government offices, said Mahsa Alimardani, a director of WITNESS, a human-rights group working on AI video evidence.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you\u2019re able to have the bandwidth needed to generate content like that and upload it, you are officially or unofficially cooperating with the regime,\u201d she said \u2013 pointing to severe restrictions Iran has imposed on the internet as part of a crackdown on nationwide protests earlier this year.<\/p>\n
State media has reposted some of the memes, including some from the account behind the \u201cLego\u201d-style videos, Akhbar Enfejari, which means Explosive News.<\/p>\n
Akhbar Enfejari described themselves as Iranians producing and uploading from within Iran in an effort to disrupt decades-long dominance of Western control of the airwaves.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ve long dominated the media landscape and, through that power, imposed narratives on many nations,\u201d the group told The Associated Press on the messaging app Telegram. \u201cBut this time, something feels different. This time, we\u2019ve disrupted the game. This time, we\u2019re doing it better.\u201d<\/p>\n
After the ceasefire was announced, Akhbar Enfejari posted: \u201cIRAN WON! The way to crush imperialism has been shown to the world. Trump Surrendered.\u201d<\/p>\n
In addition to the memes coming from pro-Iran groups, Iranian government accounts have trolled the US, including in a post Wednesday from Iran’s Embassy in South Africa that said, \u201cSay hello to the new world superpower,\u201d with a picture of the Iranian flag. Both the US and Iran declared victory after agreeing to a ceasefire.<\/p>\n
Analysts say the deep grasp of US politics and culture is the fruit of more old-school methods of propaganda: A decades-long Iranian government programme to promote narratives against the US and Israel.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis meme war comes from institutions that are very aware what the American public is aware of and pop cultural references that can appeal to them,\u201d Alimardani said.<\/p>\n
Messaging from the US and Israel<\/p>\n
Analysts say the US and Israel do not appear to be engaging in the same kind of campaign \u2013 and, given the restrictions Iran has put on internet access in the country, getting such messages to ordinary Iranians would be difficult.<\/p>\n
Early in the war, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu released a video that used AI to make it seem like he was speaking in Farsi, in which he urged Iranians to overthrow their government. The White House has published a steady stream of memes, but those are aimed at a US audience and feature clips from American TV shows and sports.<\/p>\n
The US government-run Voice of America, which for decades beamed news reports to many countries that had no tradition of a free press, does still broadcast in Farsi, although it is has been operating with a skeleton staff since Trump ordered it shut down.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis world order is really changing overnight and the US is not going to end up necessarily as the state that everybody listens to,\u201d Snow said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pro-Iran groups have used artificial intelligence to create slick internet memes in English to try to shape the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":370849,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[365,363,364,5107,111,139,64,69,145],"class_list":["post-370848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-middle-east","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-north-america","tag-nz","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=370848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370848\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/370849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=370848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=370848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=370848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}