When Eyes Can No Longer Be Trusted
The conflict between Iran, the United States and Israel continues to escalate. In two previous columns, this publication has highlighted how the conflict demonstrates the importance of national resilience grounded in knowledge and learning, and the severe cost of schools targeted by missile strikes. Now, as the war enters its third week, it has brought the battlefield into the screens of billions of people worldwide.
In mid-March 2026, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu uploaded a short video on platform X appearing to casually enjoy coffee at a café. The video was intended to dispel widespread death rumours circulating on social media. However, rather than calming the situation, the video sparked a new wave of controversy. Many social media users and AI-based chatbots labelled the video as a deepfake, citing numerous visual anomalies. Millions of viewers became polarised, with some believing Netanyahu was dead whilst others maintained their view on the video’s authenticity.
The Netanyahu case is merely one point in a flood of false content accompanying this war. Various content has been produced from both Iranian supporters and their opponents. Meanwhile, some animated videos have also been created and disseminated to provide and shape internet user support. Overall, both sides, using identical technology, are playing the same game, shaping global public perception through images and videos utilising AI-based technology.
Propaganda is certainly not new in warfare; narrative has always been an important companion weapon during conflict. However, generative AI has undeniably changed the scale and speed of propaganda fundamentally. What once required production studios, large budgets and months or even years of work can now be completed in minutes at near-zero cost. A person’s face can be placed on another’s body, an intact city can be shown as rubble, a living leader can be presented as a victim, or animated video results resembling impressive Lego-style productions can appear as though they came from Hollywood studios.
The most concerning aspect is that the more sophisticated the AI model used, the more difficult it becomes for the human eye to distinguish real from fake. This is a challenge that has genuinely arrived for our society. In previous columns, I have written about data security alarms in the AI era, the importance of innovating wisely, and how technology can divide society when digital literacy is unequal. The conflict between Iran, the US and Israel now presents the most concrete test of all these warnings.
Literacy regarding AI, including the ability to recognise synthetic content, understand how deepfakes work, and habitually verify before sharing, has become a basic necessity in this era. The question is: where do we learn to build this awareness?
Interestingly, one of the main players in this disinformation war has a noteworthy track record in higher education. Of more than 12,000 Iranian students studying in the United States during the 2023-2024 academic year, 82 per cent were enrolled at postgraduate level according to data from the Institute of International Education. This figure demonstrates a strong orientation towards advanced education, an investment that has proven to produce human resources capable of creating advanced technology independently, even under embargo.
As an academic at Amikom University in Yogyakarta, this is highly relevant, as our campus already has study programmes ranging from diploma to doctorate level, particularly in informatika. In an era where synthetic content can damage a national leader’s reputation within hours, the ability to understand, analyse and even detect products of generative AI represents a form of intellectual defence.
Students who today study natural language processing, computer vision or digital security in laboratory spaces are those who may later become the invisible frontline of national defence in fields unseen by ordinary eyes.
The war in West Asia is geographically distant, but the impact of the technology it employs is already in the palms of our hands, in every video we watch, in every image we trust, in every news we share without questioning. God has warned us in His word: “O you who have believed, if there comes to you a wicked person with information, investigate it, lest you harm a people out of ignorance and become, over what you have done, regretful.” (Qur’an 49:6). God knows best.