WASHINGTON, United States: An Iran AI influence network used fake American personas and AI-generated political content before Meta removed 35 Facebook and Instagram accounts.
Meta said the operation involved four Facebook accounts and 31 Instagram accounts linked to actors based in Iran. The accounts posted memes about US politics, immigration and the Israel-Palestine conflict.
Some content expressed anti-Republican views, according to Meta. The company said operators used artificial intelligence to create some of the material, including memes.
About 79,400 accounts followed at least one inauthentic Instagram profile, Meta found. The company characterised the campaign’s overall reach as moderate and its engagement as meaningful but limited.
Operators posed as US-based activists, students and graphic designers. Their profiles claimed locations including Washington, D.C., San Diego and Atlanta.
Meta said the network tagged real journalists and politicians and contacted prominent political figures and news organisations to seek content collaborations. None of those attempts succeeded, according to a company spokesperson cited by Axios.
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The operators also routed traffic through proxy and hosting services in the United States and Canada, which Meta said made their Iranian origin harder to detect.
A Meta spokesperson told Axios that the company shared information about the operation with US law enforcement.
