Training chatbots with Israel’s narrative
JVL Introduction
This article contains a lot of important technical information. The key, underlying, issue is to remember that Israel has dramatically increased its spending on propaganda (hasbara) and a sizeable chink of that is going into training AI, eg chatbots, in Israeli government perspectives on what is happening in Gaza, Lebanon, Iran, the West Bank and so on.
The original headline says this huge investment in AI is working but things are more nuanced and, indeed, the key movers in Israel are not happy with the results saying they have paid out a lot of money but “things have only gotten worse”.
The investment may even be counter productive as Stephen Walt, author of the “Israel Lobby, noted: “Once a country gets the reputation for spinning constantly, and gets repeatedly caught making things up, then doing ever more of it just sends the message to listeners that more BS is on the way”.
Israel tries to claim that it went beyond the requirements of international law to reduce civilian harm, referring to its use of “short warning strikes on rooftops, known as roof knocking, to signal imminent danger without causing casualties.” However, The New York Times reported that after the first day Israel “has often opted for 2,000 pound bombs that cause greater damage rather than more precise munitions.”
Despite Israel’s concern that it is not working, there is no reason to be complacent. We have already seen Gaza lose the attention of the legacy media and this is just one of so many reasons to be worried about AI.
This article was originally published by Drop Site on Tue 28 Jul 2026. Read the original here.
Israel Is Paying Millions to Train AI Chatbots How to Talk About Gaza. It's Working.
Former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale is overseeing an operation posting hundreds of blog posts on behalf of Israel, with the goal of infiltrating artificial intelligence.
Loading article text…
This article’s implications for our societies and ourselves are TERRIFYING.
It’s unrealistic to hope our thinking and decision-making won’t be influenced by the chatbots. As individuals, few of us have the time (and even fewer the inclination) to research and critically analyse the many matters needing our attention. We mostly rely on “gut feel” – and “gut feel” itself will be shaped by the chat bots.
Legislating, guarding against, identifying and defanging chat bot attacks is ONLY POSSIBLE if national governments and international blocs co-ordinate their protective action and adequately fund the defences. Will they? I doubt it.
We need to tackle more of our human problems – including chat bots – as having a “world government” context (to be solved at that level and also across the levels from the local to the international). It’s easy to say that’s what’s needed. I fear the goal could be impossible to achieve.