Gaza

Washington : A new investigation by Drop Site News has alleged that the Israeli government funded a $46.5 million digital influence campaign aimed at shaping how artificial intelligence (AI) systems respond to questions related to the Gaza war. According to the report, Brad Parscale, former campaign manager for US President Donald Trump, and his firm Clock Tower X were awarded the contract to create a network of websites designed to promote pro-Israeli perspectives and influence AI platforms, including ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity. The Israeli government has not publicly responded to the allegations at the time of publication. Network of Websites Created The investigation claims that Clock Tower X published hundreds of articles across multiple websites focusing on the Gaza war, Israel's military operations, and US-Israel relations. Among the websites identified in the report are: Allyvia.org FactSignal.org Paxpoint.org According to the investigation, these websites published content supporting closer US-Israel military cooperation, defending Israel's actions in Gaza, challenging allegations of genocide, and presenting pro-Israeli viewpoints. Influence AI Systems The report states that the campaign was intended to influence responses generated by large language models (LLMs) by publishing content optimized for search engines and AI training datasets. The investigation describes this approach as "LLM poisoning." Although the websites reportedly attracted relatively little direct public traffic, they were designed to be indexed by search engines and included in datasets used by AI systems. Referenced the Websites Drop Site News reported that several AI platforms had already cited the websites. According to the investigation: Perplexity linked to Allyvia.org when responding to a question about US military cooperation with Israel. Microsoft Copilot also referenced websites connected to Clock Tower X in certain responses. The report further claims that content from the website network entered AI training datasets through Common Crawl, a publicly available web archive widely used in training large language models. According to documents cited in the investigation, the websites were crawled hundreds of times between January and June 2026, increasing the likelihood that their content could appear in AI-generated answers. Expert Comments Hervé Letoqueux, chief executive officer of digital disinformation research organization Check First, said the widespread use of Common Crawl makes it a potential target for attempts to influence AI systems. "Common Crawl is widely used in the world of data science for training LLMs, which also means that actors want to manipulate the answers in their favour," Letoqueux said. Letoqueux said their moderate tone, structured formatting, and use of cited sources could make them more effective because AI chatbots often present multiple perspectives on disputed topics. Public Opinion The investigation also noted that public support for Israel in the United States has declined since the start of the Gaza war. It stated that the conflict has resulted in the deaths of more than 73,000 Palestinians. According to figures cited in the report, and said public opinion has shifted among some groups that have traditionally supported Israel.