Iran and China used AI agents in influence campaigns — Anadolu Agency
Iran and China have used artificial intelligence in new influence campaigns on social media in recent months. The Iranian campaign targeted audiences in the United States, Anadolu Agency reports, citing The New York Times.
Networks of fake accounts
According to the publication, publicly available Chinese artificial intelligence models were used to create autonomous agents capable of performing online tasks. Hundreds of such agents were allegedly deployed to create networks of fake accounts on the American platforms Instagram, Facebook, X and TikTok.
The agents filled the accounts with posts about politics and current events, and also coordinated messages and online interactions. U.S. officials and cybersecurity researchers called this among the first known cases in which agents based on Chinese AI models were involved in almost the entire influence campaign process.
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The operations were described as relatively primitive, but as demonstrating the possibility of automating tasks that previously required significant human involvement.
Iranian and Israeli operations
U.S. intelligence services, technology companies and security researchers investigated this activity and, according to The New York Times, linked the Chinese and Iranian operations to state-backed actors. Iranian AI accounts posed as ordinary Americans in major cities, shared popular memes, tagged journalists and politicians, and promoted views critical of the Republican Party.
Nearly 80,000 people followed these accounts in the first half of the year. The report also describes two Israeli campaigns linked to private companies. One of them, linked to the Tel Aviv-based company IntelEye, involved using AI agents to manage thousands of accounts and participate in discussions about upcoming elections in Israel. The company said it was a defensive research experiment to test the potential misuse of AI models.
