Meta, the Facebook and Instagram parent company, and TikTok removed a “singer” generated by artificial intelligence that recently released a song called “Palestine Will Be Free,” after the Combat Antisemitism Movement reported the account, the nonprofit told JNS exclusively.
“Artificial intelligence has made it easier than ever to manufacture hate at scale,” Sacha Roytman, the nonprofit’s CEO, told JNS. “Anyone with a laptop can now build a fake persona, grow an audience with harmless content and then weaponize that trust to spread antisemitism and anti-Israel propaganda.”
The “singer” account, which went by the name of Gideon Smith, had drawn a “following through positive, feel-good content and then flipped the switch to push anti-Israel messaging to the audience he manipulated,” Roytman said.
According to a report that CAM shared with JNS, the persona garnered some 155,000 followers on TikTok and 42,000 on Instagram. The account has more than 11,000 subscribers and more than 6,405 monthly listeners on Spotify.
Smith is depicted as a “Midwestern, right-leaning American who publicly defends Islam and the Palestinian cause,” per the report. The account does not disclose that it is generated by artificial intelligence, according to the nonprofit.
JNS reported in January that many appeared duped by an artificial intelligence “Rabbi Menachem Goldberg,” who had 100,000 social-media followers. The Instagram and TikTok accounts for that “rabbi” appear to have been removed.
“Gideon Smith” released songs titled “Media Lied About Islam” and “Palestine Will Be Free.” The latter and its promotional captions “focus on dead children, grieving mothers and American responsibility,” according to the nonprofit’s report.
“They call on Americans to end their alleged complicity in what the account states categorically is a Palestinian genocide being carried out by Israel,” the report states. “This transforms a positive message about religious tolerance into emotionally absolute political persuasion.”
Roytman told JNS that the nonprofit commends “Meta and TikTok for acting swiftly once CAM exposed this operation.”
Dave Arnold, a Meta spokesman, told JNS that the company took the account down. (JNS sought comment from TikTok.)
“Over the past years, CAM has built a strong flow of strategic exchange with Meta, bringing our monitoring directly to their teams to identify emerging threats and build solutions together,” Roytman told JNS. “Internet companies understand this threat is real and growing.”
“The next influence operation is already being built, and exposing these campaigns before they metastasize must be a shared priority for platforms, researchers and governments alike,” he said.
