Today I was invited to a talk at CNBCE Turkey. The topic was, of course, war, AI, and disinformation.
While I was preparing for the talk, I updated my previous report on disinformation in the current war.
A few instances of interest:
1- Unconfirmed stories on X and in some regional outlets allege that Quds Force commander Esmail Qaani has been arrested or even executed as a Mossad agent; so far, these claims lack corroboration from Iranian state media or independent reporting and fit a longer pattern of rumor‑driven narratives around Qaani’s survival and suspected betrayal.
2- Viral images claiming that US Delta Force operators had been captured by the IRGC were quickly exposed as AI‑generated fakes, even as Iranian officials like Ali Larijani hinted at prisoners of war; US Central Command denied any such capture, and no independent evidence has emerged.
A broader outline:
New waves since 6–7 March
- After the large US–Israeli strikes on Iranian energy infrastructure on the night of 7–8 March, new “before/after” images of refineries and storage tanks circulated; several highly viral versions were AI‑manipulated or recycled from earlier conflicts and have been debunked by BBC Verify, DW and others.[1][3][2]
- India Today, Euronews and other fact‑checkers have identified fresh viral “current war” clips that actually show:
AI‑generated monetisation content
- BBC Verify now explicitly frames the conflict as being “monetised” by creators who churn out AI‑generated videos and fake satellite imagery to farm views and revenue, which is a step beyond the earlier focus on purely political actors.[2]
- These clips are often cut to trending audio, posted with sensational English/Arabic captions, and then re‑used in other languages by opportunistic pages; this matches and extends the “engagement farming” pattern you already noted.[6][2]
Ongoing patterns confirmed
- DW and other European fact‑checkers have added new case studies of miscaptioned real footage (for example, genuine bombings in Tehran or southern Iran mislabelled as other cities, dates or even other countries), which reinforces the “decontextualised but real” category alongside pure fakes.[3][7]
- Recent analytical pieces (e.g., WGI, DISA) converge on the same diagnosis you used: this conflict is now a paradigmatic case of an AI‑saturated “narrative war”, with recycled clips, deepfakes and chatbot‑mediated misinfo all interacting.[1][6][8]
- https://www.wgi.world/the-use-of-generative-ai-and-disinformation-in-the-2026-us-israel-conflict-with-iran/
- https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckg8wvz427vo
- https://www.dw.com/en/fact-check-verifying-images-of-us-israel-war-on-iran/a-76243619
- https://www.indiatoday.in/amp/fact-check/story/fact-check-if-you-think-these-videos-show-the-current-israel-iran-war-you-are-mistaken-2879300-2026-03-09
- https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2026/03/06/did-you-spot-these-fake-videos-about-the-iran-war
- https://www.nampa.org/text/22876791
- https://www.dw.com/en/fact-check-debunking-social-media-claims-about-the-iran-war/a-76196001
- https://disa.org/ai-generated-deepfakes-proliferate-amidst-israel-iran-u-s-conflict/
- https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/04/business/media/iran-state-tv-social-media-war-ai.html
- https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/16/business/iran-internet-blackout-protests-disinformation.html
- https://www.aa.com.tr/en/world/iran-dismisses-us-israeli-disinformation-about-its-nuclear-program-ballistic-missiles-as-repetition-of-big-lies/3839534
- https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ai-generated-videos-falsehoods-iran-israel-conflict/
- https://blog.maxthon.com/2026/03/08/the-iran-israel-us-war-march-2026-geopolitical-escalation-energy-crisis/
- https://understandingwar.org/research/middle-east/iran-update-morning-special-report-march-8-2026/
- https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cvg3qzx512nt
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