Iran and its sympathisers have flooded social media with AI-generated content, including videos depicting Donald Trump and other world leaders as Lego figurines, as part of an escalating propaganda war with the United States. The clips, reportedly created by a team of Iranians, show Trump alongside figures such as Jeffrey Epstein, Satan, Benjamin Netanyahu, Pete Hegseth and Ayatollah Khamenei as plastic toys.
The Lego material is the latest example of what researchers have termed 'slopaganda' – AI-generated slop used for propagandistic purposes. The term was coined late last year by philosophers Mark Alfano and Michał Klincewicz in a paper published in Filosofiska Notiser.
The campaign follows a pattern of AI-generated content from both sides. In early March, after the first US-Israeli strikes on Iran, the White House posted a video mixing real attacks with clips from popular films and games. Iran responded with outdated war footage and AI-generated clips depicting attacks on Tel Aviv and US bases in the Gulf.
US President Donald Trump himself has posted AI-generated videos, including one in October 2025 showing him piloting a fighter jet and dropping faeces on protesters, and another envisioning an extravagant presidential library.
According to the researchers, slopaganda works by penetrating mental defences through repeated exposure, diluting the epistemic environment with falsehoods, and creating emotional associations rather than aiming for accuracy. While some content is clearly absurd, other material can be misleading, particularly during crises when authoritative information is scarce.
The prevalence of such content may erode public trust, as people become more likely to mistake authentic material for AI-generated fakes. This could lead to a generalised doubt about the reliability of trustworthy institutions, the authors warn.
