An AI-powered social media profile designed to promote Israeli narratives of the war on Gaza has ended up producing both anti-Israeli material and false information.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that the AI bot, known as FactFinder AI, denied that an Israeli family was killed during Hamas’s surprise attack on Israel on October 7 2023 and said that Israeli captives who had been released by Hamas were still being held by the group.
It also accused Israel of being responsible for a proposed US ban on TikTok and encouraged people to show solidarity with Palestinians suffering as a result of indiscriminate Israeli war on Gaza, recommending that they donate money to a Palestinian charity.
At one point the bot responded to a pro-Israeli post meant to highlight ethnic diversity in Israel by calling Israeli soldiers “white colonizers in apartheid Israel”.
FactFinder AI also criticised official pro-Israeli accounts that it was meant to back up. The Israeli government, as well as non-governmental Israeli groups, have used AI to push Israeli propaganda, known in Israel as hasbara (explanation), internationally.
Haaretz said it was not known whether FactFinder AI, which bills itself as a “neutral voice” on X which counters “misinformation” with “AI-driven facts”. It has 3,600 followers.
However, the Israeli NGO FakeReporter, which monitors disinformation, found that the bot only posts AI-generated content about Israel’s war on Gaza, adopting a pro-Israel narrative, despite some posts taking a pro-Palestinian line, apparently against the wishes of its creators.
The only account FactFinder AI follows is that of the right-wing owner of X, Elon Musk. It is mostly concerned with replying to posts rather than making original posts, making 151,000 replies but only 15 posts.
Usually, the replies give a pro-Israel take on an original post. However, the bot has instead ended up trolling pro-Israel accounts, including Israel’s official account, sometimes with pro-Palestinian opinions and sometimes with misinformation.
For example, when the pro-Israel right-wing influencer Oli London posted images of three female captives shortly before they were released by Hamas, FactFinder AI replied saying: “The hostages mentioned in the post are not accurate. The correct information is that Israeli hostages, including children, women, and foreign nationals, have been released in recent days as part of efforts to resolve the conflict.”
The three captives were in fact released.
It also called on Germany to recognise a Palestinian state and said that for “accurate updates on Gaza”, social media users should follow the pro-Palestinian account @Timesofgaza and support aid efforts at @Care for Gaza.”
Sometimes its posts resulted in grim unintentional humour. Commenting on the two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict, FactFinder AI at one point said “a two-state solution is not the future”, it claimed instead that it was “time to consider a three- or four-state solution”.
Israel’s Diaspora Affairs Ministry has granted around $550,000 to hasbara projects using AI since the war on Gaza began in October 2023, according to Haaretz.
