AI Propaganda Surges in Israel Election Campaign with Deepfakes

The AI Behind the Elections

This weekly column, published until the elections in cooperation with the Open University research project "It's in AI," aims to increase transparency regarding artificial intelligence in election propaganda. Each week, we analyze the scope of use and prominent cases.

Dramatic Surge in Synthetic Media

Data reveals an unprecedented, dramatic jump in AI propaganda over the past week, reaching a historic peak in the current election cycle. Since the candidate lists closed on September 9, a volatile trend was recorded with local peaks not crossing the 30 daily posts threshold marked as deepfakes. However, at the beginning of this week, a sharp and continuous surge led to three consecutive peak days (between Tuesday and Wednesday), registering a consistently high number of 35 deepfake content items identified daily.

This sharp increase represents the official transition of propaganda headquarters into the final stretch of the digital blitz, heavily utilizing complex deepfake tools and synthetic media generators.

Prominent Deepfake Videos

• Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump: The video depicts Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu laughing about a mission, followed by footage of Israeli strikes in Iran under the caption: "We saved Israel from Iranian destruction."

• Gadi Eisenkot and Yahya Sinwar: Published by the Yashar party, the video shows Netanyahu on a video call with Yahya Sinwar, congratulating him on a victory. The video was published without disclosure and subsequently removed following an order by Central Election Committee Chairman Justice Noam Solberg.

The research is funded by the Meir Shamgar Center for Digital Law and Innovation and the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Tel Aviv University, with support from The Bright Initiative by Bright Data.