Examines Extra: How disinformation campaigns are impacting reporting on the war in Iran
In this extended interview, SBS Persian's Niv Sadrolodabaee speaks with SBS Examines' Olivia Di Iorio about the challenges of reporting on the war in the Middle East, amidst disinformation campaigns and increasingly-realistic AI-generated deepfakes.
spk_0
It was actually a massive reality check for me. So we're working on this story about the situation of prisoners in Iran. I'm Olivia
spk_1
Di Iorio from SBS Examines, and we're joined by Niv from the Persian program. Welcome. How are you doing?
spk_0
Hey Olivia, thanks for having me. Obviously, we've been pretty busy with the coverage with the war
spk_0
in the Middle East and especially Iran right now. How has that been going? Obviously, covering the war in the Middle East is a bit different than our day to day coverage because with the current, as you know, the internet blackout in Iran, it's very hard to get firsthand information of what's happening on the ground in Iran.
spk_0
Obviously, your only sources are state media and state TV, so it makes it harder to get those information. We've been trying to get in touch with those people on the ground in Iran, who are kind of connected to the internet through VPNs or Starlink, for example, and trying to get some information about how they're feeling and what's going on on the ground.
spk_0
But also with the misinformation and disinformation campaigns that are happening throughout social media, it makes the job for us much more harder to fact check that what's actually happening. Yeah,
spk_1
so those internet blackouts are making it
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really hard for people to communicate inside and outside of Iran. Obviously, this would also be impacting how they're receiving news about the war. What have you been seeing?
spk_0
So what I've seen about this war, which is really interesting for me as a journalist, obviously it's not something new, but it's all the disinformation campaigns that we are seeing is happening throughout different social media platforms. It's not new, but you can see it's more complex than before, especially
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with having more AI generated content, it's almost like a flood of deep fake videos on social media. It has reached a point that even the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently posted a video of himself showing that he has 5 fingers in the video to kind of say that, 'hey, I'm alive' after the Iranian state media kind of raised suspicion about his death because of another video of him.
spk_0
So it has reached a point that we see prime ministers now trying to post a video and they're trying to say this is not an AI-generated video. But also what makes it more interesting for me as a journalist is that you see there are different types of patterns behind the AI-generated content going on in social media, you can put them in different groups and genres and
spk_0
it's not just random people making these AI-generated disinformation on social media.
spk_1
Yeah, so you're seeing, I guess a bit of a pattern, but we'll talk about that later, but I wanted to get your own experience first. You've almost been misled by one of these AI-produced deep fakes during your own reporting. What happened?
spk_0
Yeah, we were almost so close to getting misled by one of these. It was actually a massive reality check for me.
spk_0
So we're working on this story about the situation of prisoners in Iran and the concerns that the regime might use them as human shields and also the bad conditions in the prisons and the services they are being provided in the prisons. But obviously we were hunting for footage for our world news package about what's happening.
spk_0
And what was going on in social media was a video of prisoners being moved to another location from a prison in Tehran, from the Evin Prison in Tehran. So the video at the first glance looked pretty OK for me, and it was a good moment because it's obviously very hard, as I mentioned to you, to get those type of footages from Iran. So we thought this can be very useful for a package, but
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I think hours later I was interviewing with one of our experts who used to be in prison in Iran for a long time and she knows those prisons in and out, and we were talking and she warned me that there is something wrong about that
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video. Yeah, so I've got the video here. We'll have a look at it.
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It was posted on X and it's a vertical video. It seems like it's taken on like a bad quality smartphone, and there's even a Zoom in the video as well. When did you notice that something was a bit off after you rewatched it?
spk_0
So yeah, after that they warned me, and the next time I came back to the office, I tried to rewatch the video and see what's off about the video.
spk_0
And as you mentioned, it seems like somebody has filmed that video with his phone, which is a pretty common thing in Iran. If there's a protest happening in Iran, people usually film those protests with their phone and
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Western media covers those protests, those videos, those videos that were filmed by phone, but also, as you know, lots of these AI-generated videos appear to be filmed by phone. That was the first moment. Then secondly, I saw that zoom moment that you said, and something very interesting happens when you pay attention to that part. When they zoom, you see someone disappearing from the video and then
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you see someone walking in a very unusual way, so that made me question the video and raise the alarm for me. But what was more concerning for me as a journalist, as an Iranian journalist, was that video was apparently filmed in my hometown, and those were apparently from parts of my city that I used to walk probably several times, so I knew those parts of my town and
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being almost misled by a video of my own hometown was a very concerning moment for me. Yeah,
spk_1
it's quite scary and as you said, even as journalists we're taught to fact check to high standards. We've become quite familiar with spotting content and that is just so lifelike. I would definitely be fooled by a video like that. Since that point, have you been noticing it appear more on social media?
spk_0
I cannot give you a factual answer because
spk_0
at least until now, there hasn't been any research to show if there has been any disinformation, AI-led campaigns going on on social media, which we can use that as a source. And obviously we are all in our own bubbles in social media and algorithm shows us different things, but from my side, I've seen
spk_0
a lot of AI generated disinformation or at least misinformation. What I've seen, you can put them in different genres. Some of these AI-generated contents are videos of attacks led by the Iranian regime to countries in the Middle East, especially Dubai and UAE.
spk_0
Obviously, as we know and we have reported before, these attacks have happened in many other countries in the Middle East and even in UAE, but these videos are AI generated and are misleading. They're trying to show that many of those attacks, especially in commercial areas, for example, in Dubai
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were actually successful, but many media organisations like BBC Verify or New York Times or Australian Associated Press have actually seen that those videos are fake. Another common type of AI generated videos that we're seeing is from Iran's new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, which hasn't appeared in public since he's been chosen as the new ruler of Iran.
spk_0
So that's also something that we are questioning about the reasons behind that. But even before him being chosen, a couple of days before that, when his father Ali Khamenei, the previous Supreme Leader, died, an AI generated video of him came out, in which he was giving a speech. But that was AI and also another misleading video and something very interesting that I've been seeing on social media and also various media has reported on
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is videos of US and Israeli soldiers who are, for example, crying and are very sad about the war and say they want to go back
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home. We'll put up on the screen some examples for those watching and for those listening SBS Examines will publish an article with some of those images as well you can check out.
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Now Niv, are AI and deep fakes the only kinds of disinformation you're
spk_0
seeing? No, not at all. Absolutely we're seeing still the old school and traditional ways of sharing this information on social media. For example, earlier this month, we saw Associated Press reporting on state-based actors in Iran that, according to Associated Press, actively are trying to spread propaganda by giving
spk_0
interviews to the Iranian TV. So that's also another part of traditional disinformation campaigns that we are observing from here in the media.
spk_0
Obviously we don't know who's behind these campaigns. We cannot say these are systematic, targeted, or it's just random campaigns, but obviously what we can see is that there's at least misinformation going on in social media through various ways. Also, there's so many um old videos and photos being published in social media as new footage of
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the current war, which you can also consider that as misinformation or a disinformation campaign. Yeah, let's look
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at some of those together. These ones have been posted to X, and these were reported by the Australian Associated Press. Now a few of these have been posted by an Australian-based commentator with the username.
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@partisangirl. I mean, at first glance, it's so easy to believe that these, you know, could be true. Can you talk me through some of these photos? Yes,
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specifically about this account. I just want to clarify that these were not AI generated photos. These were old photos that were published as current results of Iranian attacks, for example, in Dubai.
spk_0
For example, one of the posts that this account published was about an attack on a building in Dubai, but the photo was actually fact-checked and found that it was a photo from a 2015 fire in that city. So these are also the things that we need to question about, but obviously we don't know if that account has just made a mistake, like many of us, or was that part of another campaign. These are the things that probably
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experts and social media analysts need to answer
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about. And I guess what is the point of this type of content then? What is it trying to
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influence? Look, that's not a question I can answer independently and say what they're looking for, but we've talked with experts about that.
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And experts said that these types of disinformation campaigns that we've seen a lot throughout history and throughout wars is happening and having multiple targets in different areas. One of our experts said this type of disinformation campaign from Iran is targeting
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both people inside in Iran and both people in Western countries, and it's trying to impact them in different and various ways. One of the ways that our experts said that these campaigns is impacting is creating a general distrust atmosphere between all of us. So you, you would look at the news, but
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since it's so hard to understand what's true and what's fake news, you would lose your trust and you will kind of, it will be much harder for you to believe a specific narrative. And also the experts said that's probably the main intent behind this type of campaign.
spk_0
The campaigns are looking for more, making the distrust than just selling their own agenda. Experts call this 'liar's dividend', which it kind of makes an environment which it's much harder for you to understand and distinguish between what's true and what's
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not true, and we will be sharing those interviews with these experts on SBS Examines as well.
spk_1
Niv, thank you so much for your time.
spk_0
Thanks so much for having me.
