In a 19-second clip posted to X, Gadi Eisenkot, a candidate for prime minister, stands with his arms outstretched and a broad smile on his face. In slow motion, he runs through a meadow toward a figure resembling his son, who wears a shirt bearing the words “Israeli Unity.” However, Eisenkot bypasses him and instead embraces Mansour Abbas, a prominent Arab politician leading the Ra’am party.
The video was posted on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s official account. Opinion polls show a tight race between Netanyahu and Eisenkot, who also happens to be a former chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces. The AI-generated video appears designed to play on anti-Arab sentiment, a major element of Netanyahu’s campaign.
The clip was viewed more than 1 million times, stirring significant outrage. Eisenkot’s son was tragically killed in 2023 during the Israel-Hamas war.
According to Ze Be AI, a research project of the Open University of Israel monitoring AI content during the 2026 legislative election campaign, this clip is just one of more than 1,800 posts with AI-generated content released by Netanyahu’s Likud party by mid-October. That represents roughly a quarter of the Likud party’s social media materials analyzed by Ze Be AI.
On October 27, Israelis will head to the polls in an election that could either oust Netanyahu from power or cement his grip on the country for years to come. Political scientists are already calling it Israel’s first AI election. Across the campaign, parties have deployed artificial intelligence in every aspect of campaigning, ranging from creating outrageous videos designed to stir controversy to robocalling voters and unleashing bots online.
“There is a scenario where, at a strategic point shortly before the election, AI could be used in ways that steer controversy and potentially tilt the election results,” said Anat Ben-David, a media researcher leading the Ze Be AI project at the Open University of Israel.
AI videos go mainstream
Ben-David and her research team have been tracking all social media content posted by politicians since the end of July. By mid-October, they had collected more than 44,000 posts across Facebook, Instagram, X, and TikTok, finding that over 14% of the material incorporated AI in some form.
A hybrid approach was the most common, with AI being deployed for parts or segments of an ad, such as in images, music, subtitles, logos, or full-fledged deepfakes.
Some fringe parties use the highest ratio of AI in their content. However, Netanyahu’s Likud party is the clear leader in terms of the sheer volume of AI use in the content analyzed by the team. Likud is followed by the left-wing Democrats and then Eisenkot’s party, Yashar, though at significantly lower volumes.
In July, Israel’s Central Elections Committee issued a new rule mandating that all AI-generated or manipulated content in election campaigning be labeled. Beyond this labeling requirement, however, there are few regulatory limits.
“There is no AI Act, no Digital Services Act, and the privacy law is very outdated,” Ben-David noted. “Consequently, we are seeing new AI applications here that would be impossible or highly restricted in Europe.”
Some of these innovative uses have come from Israel’s most prominent political figures.
Yair Golan, head of the Democrats, has been attempting to capitalize on popular internet trends. In one video labeled as AI content, he is shown sitting under a ceiling fan, with his outfit changing with each rotation of the blades, transitioning from an army uniform to a T-shirt bearing the popular slogan “bring them home now” (referring to Israeli hostages in Gaza), and finally to a suit and tie.
In one photorealistic AI video posted by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich in September, Israel’s attorney general and Supreme Court justices are depicted being apprehended at an anti-government protest. Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara has frequently clashed with the ruling coalition.
National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir shared an AI-generated video depicting Palestinians being wheeled on a conveyor belt into what resembles a concentration camp. The post drew widespread international condemnation, with Germany’s Foreign Ministry calling it “completely unacceptable” and “abhorrent.”
The election authority has demonstrated some willingness to intervene. In July, its chairman ordered Smotrich to take down an unlabeled AI video that it deemed misleading.
A new generation of robocall
It is not just deepfakes and campaign ads; AI is also being used to reach voters directly.
Some voters are receiving a new kind of AI-powered robocall, far more conversational than the robotic automated calls of the past. Nitsan Yasur, a disinformation researcher at the Israel Internet Association, shared a recording with DW of a four-minute phone call.
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In the recording, a voice introduces itself as Danielle, a pollster from an Israeli polling institute, and asks for voting preferences. When Yasur asks if the voice is human, it admits, “there is no human agent on the line,” before continuing to ask, “would you like to continue with the short survey?”
The bot fields several of Yasur’s questions, always steering the conversation back to who he would vote for. However, when Yasur asks five times who commissioned the survey, the bot does not reveal the information. It remains unclear whether this was part of an election campaign or a standard poll, but what is evident is how advanced robocalling technology has become.
“You don’t need real people making real phone calls, which are obviously limited in time and capacity,” Tehilla Shwartz Altshuler, a senior fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute, told DW.
Efforts to shape what chatbots tell voters
Some Israelis are also turning to AI for advice on how to cast their vote.
According to a survey by the Israel Internet Association, about a quarter of Israelis said they would consider using AI tools or other online services to inform their voting decisions.
This raises concerns about Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): creating online content designed to be picked up by AI chatbots and shape their responses. The Israeli government has already tapped into this industry. According to filings under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, it paid a US firm to build websites intended to feed large language model (LLM) systems with content supportive of the government, aiming to make AI chatbots more pro-Israel.
“The same industries are now being used domestically to affect the elections,” she noted.
Bot accounts promote Netanyahu online
There is fake content, and then there are fake audiences. Scooper, an Israeli company specializing in media monitoring, told DW that it discovered a network of inauthentic accounts boosting Netanyahu on social media. On X, more than 1,000 new accounts have been appearing daily and immediately following the Israeli prime minister, while his Instagram following has also surged in recent weeks.
About 70% of the accounts sharing Netanyahu’s posts on X are based outside of Israel and resemble bots, according to Scooper research manager Gil Feldman. Feldman explained that the company flagged these accounts by identifying suspicious behaviors, such as round-the-clock posting, recent creation dates, and missing profile pictures.
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And it is not just Netanyahu: The Israeli watchdog FakeReporter found a bot campaign linked to Ben-Gvir’s campaign, which his office denied. FakeReporter discovered a network of more than 100 accounts, some using AI-generated images and identities, targeting Smotrich and other figures.
While bot networks are not a new phenomenon, AI makes them cheaper and easier to operate. Because Israelis are early and eager adopters of new technology, Shwartz Altshuler sees the country as a test case for how AI is reshaping elections worldwide.
“The entire machinery of political propaganda is becoming totally different,” Shwartz Altshuler said.
Edited by: Uta Steinwehr, Chiponda Chimbelu, Joscha Weber, Shani Rozanes
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