Israel-backed influence campaign targets young Americans to shape AI chatbot responses

An Israel-backed influence campaign has sought to flood the internet with generated content targeting young Americans and shape how AI chatbots answer their questions, RT’s America Now has found.

Host Ben Swann and investigative journalist Elizabeth Lane reviewed a US foreign-agent (FARA) filing by Clock Tower X, a public relations firm owned by former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale. The filing names the State of Israel, through Havas Media Germany, as the foreign principal behind the campaign.

The contract called for 100 original pieces of content a month and 5,000 variations across TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and other platforms. It sought 50 million digital impressions, with at least 80% targeting Gen Z. The initial deal was valued at $1.5 million a month, while a later filing put the contract at $9 million.

The campaign also called for websites and content designed to produce “GPT framing results in AI conversations,” with the apparent aim of publishing large quantities of material that could influence what AI systems encounter and potentially the answers they provide.

Swann warned that as more people turn to AI instead of reading articles or original sources, they may accept answers without knowing who produced the underlying material or whether it is accurate.

Hundreds of X accounts repeating the same messages can similarly create the appearance of broad public consensus, he noted.

Lane said the problem is also reaching newsrooms, warning that journalists who rely on chatbot answers instead of checking documents and contacting sources risk repeating claims deliberately placed online to influence AI responses.

On the other hand, those who challenge these false narratives end up being attacked by the establishment in an effort to have them discredited, Lane observed.

“You have NATO conducting these experiments and all these bots, and then you have Brad Parscale on the other side, actually declaring himself as a foreign agent under FARA and paying actual faces to go out there propagandize people, while bots help them aid the propaganda and push it out there,” Lane surmised.

She also noted that some of the Israeli propagandists regularly amplify messages being pushed by their Ukrainian counterparts, and vice versa, suggesting that there is either an effort to bind the two conflicts together, or that both of them are ruled by the exact same people.

Watch the full episode of the four-part America Now investigation here.