Social media feeds have been flooded with fake battle scenes since start of Iran conflict
Elon Musk’s X will ban users from making money on the platform if they repeatedly post unlabelled AI-generated war videos, after social media feeds were flooded with fake battle scenes from the Iran conflict.
The social media platform, which has about half a billion monthly active users, will suspend people from earning revenue from posts for 90 days if they put up AI-generated videos of an armed conflict without adding a disclosure that it was made with AI. A second infraction will lead to a permanent ban, it said on Tuesday night, after the first days of the conflict in Iran were marked by a torrent of bogus online footage.
Timelines on X, as well as Instagram and Facebook, which are run by Meta, have carried numerous faked battle scenes, including Iranian rockets pursuing and shooting down a US jet – which was viewed 70m times, according to checks by BBC Verify – and another clip that used AI to replace smoke rising from the site of a real missile strike with a fake fireball several times bigger.
Users can make hundreds of dollars a month on X as part of the platform’s advertising model if they build substantial followings approaching 100,000 people, which incentivises the production of shocking viral posts.
