Elon Musk’s X has announced that users repeatedly posting unlabelled AI-generated war videos will be banned from earning revenue on the platform, following a surge of fake battle scenes from the Iran conflict. The policy, effective immediately, imposes a 90-day suspension from creator revenue sharing for a first offence and a permanent ban for subsequent violations.
Since the start of the Iran conflict, social media feeds on X, Instagram, and Facebook have been flooded with fabricated footage. A fake clip of Iranian rockets shooting down a US jet garnered 70 million views, while another used AI to replace smoke from a real missile strike with a far larger fireball. Such content exploits X’s advertising model, where users can earn hundreds of dollars monthly by building followings near 100,000.
Nikita Bier, X’s head of product, stated: “During times of war, it is critical that people have access to authentic information on the ground. With today’s AI technologies, it is trivial to create content that can mislead people.” He confirmed that failing to disclose AI-generated footage of armed conflict would trigger the penalties.
Other fake videos have reached vast audiences, including a clip claiming to show “Iran destroyed the US airbase in Riyadh,” which was actually 18-month-old footage of an Israeli strike in Yemen. Full Fact, a UK fact-checking organisation, reported seeing “AI turbocharge the spread of misinformation,” with editor Steve Nowottny citing fake images of an aircraft carrier, the Burj Khalifa on fire, and Ayatollah Khamenei’s body.
Sam Stockwell, an AI researcher at the UK’s Centre for Emerging Technology and Security, noted a worrying trend of users asking chatbots to verify whether videos are AI fakes, despite chatbots being poor at assessing real-time events. “People are trying to manipulate AI outputs to support their narrative and arguments about the war,” he said.
