Israel's campaign to shape AI chatbot answers
Israel is paying to seed AI models with favorable content about its conduct in Gaza, and the effort is now being exposed in mainstream outlets — bad news for anyone who trusts chatbots as a neutral news source.
- A PR firm handling Israel's registered US influence work set up a think-tank-style website through a subcontractor, filling it with unsigned "data reports" written to be picked up by AI systems.
- The pages are built around questions like "Is the IDF the world's most moral army?" — phrasing aimed at chatbots, not readers, and answers from ChatGPT and Perplexity have already pulled from them.
- Earlier filings show a far bigger, $46.5 million influence campaign run through former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale, including websites built to shape AI answers.
- The push follows the same playbook used with TV and print for decades, now extended to the AI summaries that increasingly replace search results.
- The paid content is running against a steady stream of damaging reports: an Israeli minister calling for nightly killings in Gaza, an Israeli doctor describing routine amputations from handcuff injuries among detainees, and settlers diverting a West Bank village's water spring for tourism.
Outlook: Expect more disclosures as foreign-agent filings pile up, and growing pressure on AI companies to explain where their answers come from.