Iran’s Propaganda Machine Has Found a New Tool: AI

Staff Writer1 hour ago
Iran’s Propaganda Machine Has Found a New Tool: AI
OpenAI’s latest investigation has exposed an Iran-based

Written by
Shahriar Kia

OpenAI’s latest investigation has exposed an Iran-based influence operation that did something more sophisticated than flood social media with bots: it manufactured Western journalists and persuaded real publications to print their work.

The operation, dubbed “Bogus Bylines,” used seven fictitious journalist identities—mostly posing as Americans—to place nearly 100 articles in online outlets around the world. Operators working from Iran used ChatGPT to polish English-language articles, tailor them to editors’ submission requirements and draft convincing pitch emails. Some fake personas were reinforced with accounts on X, Facebook, Instagram and other platforms. One claimed to be an “American freelance writer”; platform data placed the account in Iran.

The objective was not merely to generate content. It was to launder propaganda through genuine media.

After the U.S.-Iran conflict began, publication activity surged. The network pushed narratives portraying Iran as a resilient victim, the United States as the aggressor and Israel as an unreliable ally. Some publishers then promoted the planted articles through their own social-media accounts, giving the operation access to audiences it could never have reached through obvious Iranian propaganda channels. OpenAI rated the article-placement operation Category 4 on its six-point influence scale.

OpenAI did not identify the organization behind Bogus Bylines and said its activity was consistent with a commercial influence-for-hire operation. That qualification matters. But treating this case in isolation would obscure a much larger and far better documented pattern.

Only weeks earlier, Anthropic exposed three Iranian state-aligned operations tied directly to named propaganda institutions of the clerical regime. They included the Islamic Culture and Communications Organization under the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, the Islamic Propaganda Office of Khorasan Razavi and the Islamic Propaganda Organization’s Bina Cultural Observatory. Anthropic said the operators themselves described their work as “soft war” and “cognitive warfare.”

Their use of AI was systematic. Claude was employed to construct influence strategies, fake personas, target databases and propaganda manuals; transform government intelligence bulletins into multilingual content; disguise official narratives as material from independent or foreign writers; and manufacture apparently grassroots campaigns. Some material was disseminated through channels aligned with the Revolutionary Guards.

Google has documented the same trajectory. Its Threat Intelligence Group reported in September that Iranian actors used generative AI to create fictitious personas and produce state-aligned counter-influence narratives, even instructing models to behave like psychological-warfare specialists and apply persuasive and manipulative techniques in support of regime objectives. Earlier Google research found Iranian government-backed actors were the largest government-linked users of Gemini among the advanced threat groups it tracked. Their targets and interests included foreign governments, defense organizations and Iranian dissidents.

Meta, meanwhile, has repeatedly dismantled Iran-based coordinated influence networks posing as Americans. One 2026 network used fake activists, students and graphic designers supposedly living in U.S. cities, some publishing AI-generated material. Another Iranian campaign constructed elaborate fake news outlets and personas to push Tehran’s regional interests.

The picture emerging across competing technology companies is therefore difficult to dismiss.

Tehran’s propaganda apparatus is not merely experimenting with artificial intelligence. Institutions tied to the ruling establishment are integrating AI into an old doctrine of deception: conceal the source, invent credible identities, imitate independent journalism, manufacture consensus and push the regime’s narratives into audiences that would reject them if the real author were visible.

The technology is new.

The dictatorship’s method is not.

Staff Writer1 hour ago
Arab-Islamic Committee in Defence of Ashraf
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