Bots, deepfakes and surveillance tools fuel a near-tied Israeli election campaign

Days before Tuesday's general election, Israel's two main political camps are level in the polls, and a large share of the contest is being fought on screens. Surveys show the bloc around Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the opposition bloc led by former Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot in a virtual tie. Both sides are using social media ads and doctored AI videos to rally supporters, win over undecided voters and attack their rivals. Many of the clips offer a bleak picture of Israel under the other side, whether the viewer leans right or centre.

On Thursday, the liberal daily Haaretz reported that dozens of online bots built to undermine the Iranian government were being repurposed. They are now spreading propaganda for Netanyahu and his Likud party and warning voters about the dangers of Eisenkot and former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who are part of the opposition bloc. Other accounts also describe heavy bot use by the campaigns of Netanyahu and far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir to amplify their messaging.

Both camps are posting AI-generated and deepfake videos on X. Several show Netanyahu confronting his alleged failings before the Hamas-led attack of October 7, 2023. Others depict the opposition as sympathetic to Arab parties, the parties of Palestinian citizens of Israel, which many see as potential kingmakers.

Some of the material has caused open uproar. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich released an AI video showing the Supreme Court's president, a justice and the attorney general being violently dragged from an antigovernment protest. All three are frequent targets of a far-right government that has sought to shake off judicial oversight. Earlier this year Netanyahu shared an AI video in which Eisenkot runs toward a figure many believed resembled his son Gal, who was killed while taking part in the war in Gaza. Eisenkot then passes the figure and embraces Mansour Abbas, head of the Arab Ra'am party. Netanyahu's camp said it never meant the figure to mirror Eisenkot's son, who wears a T-shirt reading "Israel's Unity" in Hebrew, and swapped the male character for a female one. Ben-Gvir shared another video portraying the people of Gaza as donkeys being herded to Paris. He has called for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza through "voluntary emigration."

The tools extend beyond video. Likud wanted to use Elector, an app that tracks turnout on election day, but the Central Elections Committee restricted it over privacy concerns. The party will use a new app, Victory 26, instead. It does not reveal voters' identities, but it lets activists and officials see which areas have the lowest turnout, manually record the names of people who have voted, and then target those who have not. According to Haaretz, Likud is urging supporters and potential sympathisers to download it. Sebastian Ben Daniel, a doctoral researcher in algorithms, computability and AI, said such programmes are basic compared with what the Israeli military can now do, and called Israel "the perfect laboratory" for developing the technology.

Privacy worries weigh most on Palestinian citizens, who are about 20 percent of the population and whose political activity is already heavily monitored. Significant resources have been directed by the Israeli right against the Joint List, an alliance of Hadash, Balad and Ta'al, and against Ra'am, the United Arab List. Palestinian citizens generally back one of the two, and all the parties have faced legal challenges ahead of the vote. Mauricio Lapchik, director of the Joint List's Hebrew-language campaign, said they compete against parties with far greater budgets and technology, Likud in particular, and that technology is deepening an already unequal field. He said the campaign believes its message matters more than the artificial technology behind rivals' messaging.

Roi Zur, an Essex University lecturer who studies voting behaviour, called the online campaign especially violent. He said AI, algorithms and data management are used to entrench "affective polarisation," meaning firmer political blocs and more hostility toward the other side. That, he said, targets voters at the fringe who might drift to the opposing bloc and pulls them back. Turnout matters too: in large secular cities such as Tel Aviv and Haifa it is typically about 60 percent, against 80 to 85 percent in Haredi-heavy places such as Jerusalem and Bnei Brak. Part of the campaigning, he said, is getting people to vote by threatening them with the "other."

With the blocs tied, the outcome may turn on smaller parties and on who actually shows up Tuesday.