Deepfakes and bots: AI transforms elections in Israel

Deepfakes and bots: AI transforms elections in Israel October 19, 2026 In a 19-second video published on X, Gadi Eisenkot, the candidate for Israeli prime minister, appears standing with his arms outstretched and a huge smile on his face. In slow motion, he runs across a meadow towards a person who resembles his son, wearing a t-shirt with the words "Israeli Unity." But Eisenkot passes by and, instead, hugs Mansour Abbas, a prominent Arab politician who leads the Ra'am party and is running in the elections. The video was published on the account of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Opinion polls show that Netanyahu and Eisenkot, who is also the former Chief of Staff of the Israel Defense Forces, are involved in a tight contest. Generated by AI, the video appears to be designed to exploit anti-Arab sentiment, a key element of Netanyahu's campaign. The clip has been viewed more than a million times and has caused outrage. Eisenkot's son died in 2023 during the war between Israel and Hamas. According to Ze Be AI, a research project from the Open University of Israel that monitors AI-generated content in the 2026 legislative election campaign, this video is just one of the more than 1,800 posts with AI-generated content that the Likud party, led by Netanyahu, had disseminated throughout the election campaign until mid-October. This represents approximately a quarter of the Likud party's materials on social media analyzed by Ze Be AI. On October 27, Israelis will vote in elections that could remove Netanyahu from power or consolidate his control over the country in the coming years. Political scientists are already calling these the first elections in Israel in the age of AI. Parties have been using AI in all aspects of the campaign, from creating scandalous videos intended to provoke controversy to automated calls to voters and the deployment of bots on the internet. "There is a scenario where, at a strategic moment shortly before the elections, AI could be used, or is used, in ways that heighten controversy and could swing election results," stated Anat Ben-David, a media researcher leading the Ze Be AI project at the Open University of Israel. AI-generated videos are spreading Ben-David and her research team have been monitoring all content published on social media by politicians since the end of July. By mid-October, they had collected more than 44,000 posts on Facebook, Instagram, X, and TikTok, and discovered that more than 14% of the material used AI in some way. The most common approach was a hybrid one, where AI was used for a part or segment of an advertisement: in images, music, subtitles, logos, or complete "deepfakes." Some minority parties are the ones who resort to AI most in their content. But Likud is, by far, the winner in terms of absolute figures of AI use in the content analyzed by the team. Following Netanyahu's party are his left-wing rivals, the Democrats, and then Eisenkot's party, Yashar, although with much lower figures. The Central Electoral Commission of Israel enacted a new regulation in July that requires labeling all content generated or manipulated by AI in election campaigns. Beyond that, there are few restrictions. "There is no AI law, nor a Digital Services law, and the privacy law is very outdated," noted Ben-David. "So new uses [of AI] are observed that would be impossible to see in Europe." Some of these uses come from the most prominent politicians in Israel. Yair Golan, the leader of the Democrats, has tried to capitalize on popular internet trends. In a video labeled as AI-generated content, he appears sitting under a ceiling fan: with each turn of the blades, his attire changes: from a military uniform to a t-shirt with the popular slogan "Bring them home now" (referring to the Israeli hostages in Gaza taken by Hamas) and finally to a suit and tie. In a photorealistic video generated by AI, published by the Minister of Finance, Bezalel Smotrich, in September, the Attorney General of Israel and the Supreme Court justices are arrested in an anti-government demonstration. The Attorney General, Gali Baharav-Miara, has frequently faced the ruling coalition. And the Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, shared an AI-generated video in which Palestinians are seen being transported on a conveyor belt to what appears to be a concentration camp. This post provoked widespread condemnation, and the German Foreign Ministry called it "completely unacceptable" and "repulsive." The electoral authority has shown some willingness to intervene. In July, its president ordered Smotrich to withdraw an AI-generated video without identification that he deemed misleading. A new level of automated calls It is not just about deepfakes and advertisements: AI is also being used to reach voters directly. Some voters are receiving a new type of automated call powered by AI, much more colloquial than the past automated and robotic calls. Nitsan Yasur, a researcher specializing in disinformation at the Israeli Internet Association, shared with DW the recording of a four-minute phone call. In it, a voice presents itself as 'Danielle', a pollster from an Israeli institute, and asks about their voting preferences. When Yasur asks if the voice is human, she admits that "there is no human agent on the other side of the line," before continuing to ask: "Would you like to continue with this short poll?" The bot answers several of Yasur's questions, although it always brings the conversation back to who would vote for whom. But when Yasur asks five times who commissioned the poll, the bot does not reveal that information. Therefore, it is still unclear whether it was part of an election campaign or a poll. What is clear is how advanced the robotic calls have become. "There is no need for real people making real phone calls, who obviously have time and capacity limitations," explained to DW Tehilla Shwartz Altshuler, lead researcher at the Institute for Democracy of Israel. Efforts to influence what chatbots say to voters Some Israelis are also resorting to AI to get advice on how to vote. Approximately a quarter of Israelis stated that they would consider using AI tools or other online services to make their voting decisions, according to a survey by the Israeli Internet Association. This raises concerns about the optimization of generative engines: the creation of online content designed for AI chatbots to pick up and influence their responses. The Israeli government has already resorted to this sector. According to documents presented under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, it paid an American company to create websites intended to feed LLM systems with government-favorable content, so that AI chatbots would be more pro-Israeli. Bot accounts promote Netanyahu on the internet There is false content and, furthermore, there are fake audiences. Scooper, an Israeli company specializing in media monitoring, told DW that it has discovered a network of fake accounts that promote Netanyahu on social media. More than 1,000 new accounts appear on X each day that immediately follow the Israeli prime minister. Their number of followers on Instagram has also soared in recent weeks. Around 70% of the accounts that share Netanyahu's posts on X are based outside of Israel and appear to be bots, according to Gil Feldman, the research director at Scooper, who explained to DW. Feldman pointed out that the company identified them by looking for suspicious behaviors, such as posts 24 hours a day, recent creation dates, and the absence of profile pictures. And it is not just about Netanyahu: the Israeli surveillance organization FakeReporter discovered a bot campaign linked to Ben-Gvir's campaign, which his office denied. FakeReporter discovered a network of more than 100 accounts, some of which used AI-generated images and identities, targeting Smotrich and other figures. Although the bot networks are nothing new, AI can make them cheaper and easier to manage. And, since Israelis are pioneers and enthusiastic about adopting new technologies, Shwartz Altshuler considers that the country is a test case of how AI is transforming elections around the world. "The entire machinery of political propaganda is completely changing," concluded the researcher. (gg/cp) Don't let the algorithm hide the news. If you trust that site for reliable information, please take a moment to select us as your preferred source on Google: click here and check the box or press the DW.com button to always see our verified news in your preferences.