Two private companies in Israel used open-source AI models to conduct or simulate influence campaigns on social media, The New York Times reported on Friday, in an article that also reported on use of the technology by the Iranian and Chinese governments.

One of the firms, IntelEye, said its activity – which concerned domestic Israeli politics ahead of the October election – was a research experiment, intended to bolster defenses against misinformation. Maor Sellek, one of the company’s co-founders, said IntelEye used the Chinese AI company DeepSeek for the experiment.

“IntelEye does not operate influence campaigns,” Sellek told the Times. “Our work with DeepSeek was conducted for defensive research and testing, to understand how models with insufficient safeguards could be misused and to improve detection of that activity.”

The campaign, which reportedly came to the attention of US intelligence earlier this year, saw AI agents operate about a thousand accounts on social media platforms, posting content and responding to other users.

The Times noted that some of the IntelEye bots were posting in support of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, while others were posting against him.

The other Israeli........

© The Times of Israel