Inside the AI Slop Propaganda Wars

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0:34They won. They won the Propaganda Award. They know what we want to watch, and it's Lego slime.

0:44Hello, and welcome to the 404 Media Podcast, where we bring you unparalleled access to hidden worlds, both online and IRL. 404 Media is a journalist-founded company and needs your support. To subscribe, go to 404media.co. As well as bonus content every single week, subscribers also get access to additional episodes where we respond to their best comments. Gain access to that content at 404media.co. I'm your host, Joseph. And with me are two of the 404 Media co-founders and a special guest. The first of those co-founders being Sam Gold. Hello, I'm back. And Jason Kebler. Hi. You sound sad. Are you sad?

1:28Yes, because also our regular contributor, Matthew Gold, has said, no, I'm very, very happy that he's here. Thrilling. I'm trying to bring the segues in. No, I just didn't sleep well. That's all. So I have my raspy voice. But I'm excited to get into these stories. Matthew, we brought you on to talk about this one that you wrote. I think Jason edited it or maybe wrote some of it as well. But the headline is, Iran is winning the AI slop propaganda war. So obviously we'll get into it. But there is a particular viral video that this article starts with, Lego themed. can you describe just what happens in the video?

2:13Not even what it means, not even who made it, just literally what happens in the video. So Lego Donald Trump is gambling at a casino and he rolls the dice and they come up a run. The way that dice may come up snake eyes and you know that you've lost. These dice come up a run and then a rap song kicks in. And it is a rap song about how Donald Trump is a loser. and that kind of plays against a bunch of Lego footage of Trump being sucked further and further into hell and having to face armies of dead soldiers and drown in a river of blood and see a bunch of dead children and be controlled on puppet strings by Benjamin Netanyahu.

2:59Then we cut back into the real world and see Iranian missiles destroying American military assets. And that's like three minutes of that, basically. that's a lot three minutes it's very catchy though it's like I mean this song really makes it all move it's I was because I was watching it before we jumped on again just now and I was like this really like the song really makes this work in the way the propaganda works do you still feel that it's Hamilton-esque I do I stand by this as a musical theater nerd as someone who has seen Hamilton many times before unfortunately Unfortunately, yes, I feel like the LLM that they used to pump out this rap song sounds like it was trained on Hamilton.

3:47Sounds like there may be disagreement from the editor being Jason there. How about that? I don't think I've actually heard it. Let's play a small clip right now so the audience can decide for themselves whether this is Hamilton themed or not.

4:26Okay, so please don't write in. Or whether you think that is the case or not. just keep that thought to yourself. But these and other videos are made by Explosive News Team. I guess before we talk about some other videos, what on earth is Explosive News Team? So as far as I've been able to suss out, which is really interesting, again, thinking about this as I was reporting on it, how hard it is right now to suss out the truth of what is going on in any one thing. It's always difficult during the war, but this particular administration in this particular country, it's not super easy. But as far as I can tell, they are Iranians that are running a news agency slash propaganda team and primarily on Telegram.

5:25It seems to be where stuff goes first. So you see the Lego videos that go viral on other social media sites, Instagram and Twitter, especially, X.com. But they also have a guy who does face-to-camera, tells you what's going on, walking around outside explaining the war and the minutiae of the day-to-day. But it's the Lego stuff that people really love from them. Yeah, we'll get to the Lego stuff in a minute because that definitely is, frankly, the most interesting part. Do we have any idea, and I appreciate, you know, there's already a fog around this, and then there's the fog of war as well in a way, but do we have any idea if the Explosive News team is like part of the government, or it's just sort of random people, or it's an offshoot?

6:17Like, is there any indication, or do we kind of need researchers to look into that more before we have a better idea of exactly... I think we need, like, a 4C speaker and someone who's an expert in Iran to watch all of the videos and look for the tells, which I am not. So yeah, I don't know. Yeah. I mean, I think this is one of the problems with AI slop in general is that it's hard to tell. Unless there's something extremely distinctive about it, it's hard to tell who is making it, where it's coming from. It's also usually pretty hard to tell which tools are being used. So I think in some cases, it's obvious.

6:57in this case, I'm not sure what they're using. It could be C-Dance, but I'm not sure. Yeah. On that, what are some other examples of videos that they're making, Matthew? And I mean, apart from the Lego, because this isn't like this Telegram channel where this community just sprung up and only make Lego stuff. There's other sort of AI slop propaganda as well. What other stuff are they making? uh i mean the the explosive news team like is pretty heavy on they they figured out that the lego hits and so there's a lot of lego but the other things that i'm seeing um that maybe not always necessarily from them but is like iran centric um i also see a lot of uh stuff kind of starring ali who's the founder of shia islam and is like really important to like uh 12 or islam in in Iran, kind of depicted as a superhero, like pushing back American forces.

7:58I also see a lot of... There's like anime, the news. Have y 'all... Surely y 'all have seen versions of this where it's like important news stories done in an anime style. I'm seeing a lot of that too, like AI-generated Iran war footage, but in a style of anime. And it's always kind of depicted in a hellscape and the American soldiers are losing. and then just kind of a lot of like stuff that I would almost classify as like past generation five years ago kind of has that weird like gross sheen to it from earlier models you mean earlier yeah earlier model looking like very quick cuts you know like Trump kind of doing this and then like an American soldier leaning over and dying like it kind of runs the gamut But the Lego stuff is really what seems to be hitting.

8:52Sure. So, well, I mean, I guess there's two questions there. I'm more interested in the latter, but why do you think the Lego is hitting? But I think more importantly, why do you think they're doing Lego? Because I think you make some pretty good points in the piece itself. So there's some stuff I was thinking about that's not in the piece, but it is culturally ubiquitous on a worldwide level. So I think propaganda works best when it's simple and easily read and understood. And Lego is kind of beloved the world over. It's one of the most recognizable IPs outside of Mickey Mouse. And I think it's easily animated.

9:40It seems to lend itself to this kind of AI aesthetic. When you see it, you don't read it necessarily as like AI slop instantly the way you would like some of these other videos, like the anime videos and some of the more realistic quote unquote stuff that I've seen. And I think that Iran has been, has known that America is its enemy for a long time and has studied us and watched us and knows that we respond to cartoon characters. Right, that was the big finding. A lot of our cultural heroes are comic book heroes and mythological figures and that we love that stuff. And I think that this, not all of the Lego propaganda is designed for an American audience, but a lot of it is.

10:27A lot of it is. And I think they want Americans to see it and so they make it into a simple cartoon that they know will kind of like be instantly recognized and go viral. Well, I know that we are going to get into this more, but I think this is a good time to say like, the message in this is targeted directly at americans for the most part and it's like it hits the high notes of the sort of criticisms of trump and this war where it's like in the lego videos it's like trump is going to iran to take iranian oil uh trump is doing this as a distraction from the epstein like epstein figures very heavily into the propaganda like um i think that the fact that it's like destroying the economy, like all this sort of stuff like plays into the type of AI propaganda that's coming out of Iran.

11:21And so I think it resonates not just on a like, oh, Lego is like a very famous brand, but it also resonates on the level of like this stuff that it's saying is hitting these, like the criticism that people have over this war. Have you seen the new one? I don't think so. No. So it's everything that you're just saying, like times a thousand. So it's Lego Trump in the Oval Office. This time they've got a bandage on his left hand, just like a reference to these bruises that keep showing up and that people can spread around every time they pop up. And there's a No Kings protest on the lawn and he's looking at it and they are playing on a stereo, the loser song from the previous video.

12:13It's like part of the No Kings protest. They're building, these Lego videos are building their own lore. Yeah, there's a throwback. A throwback to the previous video. And then he turns around and it keeps cutting to somebody in Iran making a coffin. It says loser on it. They ship to him. And there's a shot where the coffin is open and it says loser and Donald Trump is screaming. and the coffin is surrounded by the dead bodies of blonde-haired children, which is what they... Every time they reference Epstein in the videos, that's what they use. So there's Epstein in here as well, just to be clear, in some capacity.

12:56Oh yeah. They often hit that over and over and over again. Even if it's just a parting shot on the last title card, be like, remember of the Epstein files. He's in the Epstein files over and over and over again. Right. That'll make sense. On sort of the flip side, there is obviously a lot of US, American AI slop propaganda, right? It's not so much about the war, right? It's much more domestic stuff. Like there was a White House video. things about the new farming initiative or something. It looks like Trump is in Animal Crossing and it'll be interesting to see if Nintendo does anything there considering it's very aggressive legally against sometimes children who are pirating games and stuff.

13:54Fact check, he's in Poképedia, actually. Wait, really? I swear it was Animal Crossing. I'm going to check. Poképedia looks a lot like Animal Crossing. And Poképedia just came out. They're capitalizing on that release. On the new Pokemon game. Right, right, right. On the new Pokemon game, which is basically Animal Crossing with Pokemon. Gotcha. Well, then we also had a ton of others that I'll let you explain. But what about America's AI slop? What have US agencies been up to in that world? It's interesting because Iran is trying to signal to American audiences, And it really does feel like Trump's stuff is very narrowly focused on the 30 % of America that still supports him, just barely.

14:42And even within that coalition, it is very narrowly aimed at the people that have been extremely online on 4chan for a long time. It's a lot of old video game memes. they're cutting together Call of Duty killstreak cams with missile strikes from Iran. There's another one where they have CJ from Grand Theft Auto San Andreas walking into the background like, oh no, here we go again. Repeatedly cut with Iran drone strikes. And then the White House comm director retweets this with the code for infinite ammo from Grand Theft Auto San Andreas. I'm just thinking about so many shibboleths in that you have to understand...

15:29I've played too many video games, so I instantly got all of it. But if you're just a dude in Southern California that is mad that gas is$8 a gallon, and you see all of that and you don't play video games, none of it makes any sense to you. It just looks like nonsense. But you see the Lego video and you instantly know everything. All of it makes perfect sense. All of the images are clear. And I think the week that I wrote this, it really all culminated in the White House and a bunch of the other accounts retweeting these pixelated images of Trump and Vance and other, I will say, regime figures that ends in them releasing a White House app.

16:20so like this is not like the propaganda is not hitting not hitting in quite the same way and even their uses of AI that we've kind of seen are it's like the Pokedex thing they see a trend popping and they kind of jump on it and they ruin the joke for everyone they'll take Studio Ghibli and give like Ice Deportation Photos a Sheen you know Jason's written about people kind of manifesting using S.O.R.E. to manifest these like these ice deportation videos that never really happened it all just feels very like very narrow playing for a very narrow audience whereas the Iranian stuff is hitting wide and deep and getting very popular so popular that they're referencing past videos right Right.

17:18So I'm going to take your fact check and I'm going to uno reverse card it because I'm looking at a Gotako article. Headline, President Trump is now posting Animal Crossing AI slop. I'm looking at the image right now. Maybe there are two. Maybe you can search and then you can double uno reverse card me. I can hear your mechanical keyboard going, trying to outdo me. I'm looking at it. It's definitely Animal Crossing, but maybe there's another one as well. Okay, that's definitely Animal Crossing from March 27th. Dude, I played 300 ,000. Make Farming Great Again. Okay, I think we're referring to...

17:55I think we're both correct because if you scroll down, you see the Make America Great Again. Uh-huh. That is Pokedex. You can see the Pokemon in the upper right-hand corner, upper center. That is a Pokemon symbol on that building. That is a Pokemon... What do they call them? Health clinic. So we're both technically right. We're both technically correct. Which is the best kind. So now that we know no one won that battle between Joseph and Matthew, who is winning the AI slop-off between America and Iran? I mean, it seems pretty clear from everything you just said. Iran. If you've got... I mean, the fact that we're having a podcast discussion about Iran's LEGO videos, like it's over, like they won.

18:46They won the propaganda war. They know us. They know what we want to watch. And it's Lego slop. We'll eat that up. Set it to a Hamilton song. You've got us. You won. Again, dispute it. Jason. Well, so I was just going to say, I mean, I edited this piece. It was great. And I added a paragraph to Matthew's great article. which is basically that, you know, it's hard to say exactly what's going on here. Like, I think that obviously the Iranians have been studying America and American culture for a long time, like all the points that Matt made. But also with AI slop more generally, the social media platforms have really incentivized people from other countries to pay attention to America and American culture and American politics in a way that they might not otherwise.

19:45Because as we've reported before, it's like, if you can make AI content that's viral in the United States, you can make more money that way. And obviously the Iranian propaganda is not intended to make money. It's not a money-making thing. They're not trying to collect bonus program money, etc. But what has happened is social media companies and AI companies have incentivized thousands, millions, who knows, many, many, many people in other countries to practice making AI-generated content that resonates with Americans. And so therefore, you're basically training a workforce to do propaganda to the US.

20:31And that is what has happened on social media more broadly. And then here in the US, it's like, I don't know, we just have a bunch of fucking shit posters who are trying to talk to their own insular communities. And it's like not... It just doesn't resonate as well, I don't think. And it's like, you have a bunch of people on Truth Social and on X who are just laughing at their own jokes over and over and over again. They can't really see the broader context of what's happening here. They can't understand how the world sees us or they don't care. And I think that's one of the reasons why I think the propaganda that's being made by this administration and the propaganda that's being made within the US just isn't hitting as hard.

21:24Yeah, that makes complete sense. All right, we will leave that there. When we come back after the break, we're going to talk about something entirely different about AI strike zones. in baseball. Baseball is back on 404 Media. We'll be right back after this.

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27:06All right, we are back. This story written by Jason. Quote, you can't defeat the robots, end quote. quote, baseball's AI strike zone is must-watch television. Let me just read this sentence of your piece, Jason, to contextualize it for everybody to understand that, you know, this is much broader than baseball immediately off the bat. So, you write, This very human, very emotion-driven mistake then set up a series of events resulting in the first ever manager ejection for arguing about a robot's decision. perhaps a glimpse of the future of baseball and if you squint a microcosm of various human AI beefs in society more broadly so what episode were you talking about like what specific mistake happened here and then we'll talk about the system yeah uh in the Orioles game on Sunday the Twins manager, who's a new manager, whose name I'm blank, Derek Shelton is his name.

28:13In the ninth inning of the game, basically the pitcher used this new ABS system, which is an automated ball strike system, like an AI automated challenge system for the strike zone, which we will talk more about. he argued with the umpire over the decision that it had made and sort of the specifics around whether the Orioles player had challenged quick enough. And the Orioles announcer, who's this guy, Kevin Brown, said this. And Helsley drops in a slider that is called ball four. I don't think Adley Rutschman... I think he probably did challenge. The pitcher is challenging. Oh, the pitcher is challenging.

29:03Yeah, he put him right to his hat. Ryan Helsley with the first pitcher challenge, and he got it! The first challenge by an Orioles pitcher, and Derek Shelton is incensed. He didn't think Helsley got that off in time. Well, he went right to his hat. He came off the mound and tapped his hat. Laz Diaz is yelling at Derek Shelton to get back. And the runner, Keyshawn, will be sent back to first. And Derek Shelton's been thrown out. He's arguing with the robots. You can't defeat the robots. I think he's arguing that Heldsley took too much time to challenge it. That's what he's arguing. You throw a pitch you think's a strike.