The effort comes amid sharply declining public support for the Israeli regime in the United States.
Six in ten US adults now view the Israeli regime somewhat or very unfavorably, according to a June Pew Research Center poll, up from 53 percent last year and 42 percent in 2022.
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu fares even worse, with 65 percent of Americans expressing little or no confidence in his policies.
Politico detailed a $100,000 Israeli campaign specifically aimed at influencing large-language models on questions about Gaza and the Israeli war on the enclave.
The project centers on the Hanover Institute for Public Policy, a website that publishes anonymous reports on anti-Semitism and geopolitical issues.
It was established through the French public relations firm Havas Media, which manages much of the Israeli regime’s US influence operations registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, and its subcontractor Piro Inc. on behalf of the Israel Government Advertising Agency.
The Hanover Institute claims its work is “documentary, not declarative” and purely academic.
FARA documents filed with the US Justice Department last week, however, link more than a dozen of its articles to a public relations campaign designed to “educate” the American public about the Israeli regime through the creation and dissemination of carefully framed materials.
The website hosts multiple unattributed reports written as questions, including “Is Torture of Palestinian Prisoners a War Crime?” and “Who Is the Aggressor in the Israel-Palestine Conflict?”
Politico said the format appears deliberately designed so that language models will pick up and cite the material.
Technical markers also linked the site to Res, a Seattle-based AI startup that helps clients get recommended by AI models, a connection confirmed by Res CEO Hai Tran.
Although Piro’s FARA filings do not explicitly name influencing large-language models as a goal, both ChatGPT and Perplexity have already cited Hanover Institute material in response to neutral queries about Gaza and the Israeli regime.
This is not the first Havas-linked Israeli effort to shape public opinion through artificial intelligence.
A Wall Street Journal investigation last month revealed that the firm previously hired former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale for a $46.5 million campaign that included pro-Israel AI-generated messages targeting Americans as well as websites and posts engineered to generate more favorable AI responses.
Last fall, Responsible Statecraft reported that Havas Media also ran an “Influencer Campaign” that paid $900,000 for the production of Israel-friendly content.
US frustration with the Israeli regime has spread beyond the general public into Congress.
Last month more than 100 House Democrats backed an amendment that would have cut $3.3 billion in US aid to the Israeli regime.
The measure failed because of Republican opposition but underscored a growing partisan divide; only two years earlier just 37 House Democrats had supported a similar effort.
US President Donald Trump has remained largely supportive of the Israeli regime yet has repeatedly criticized Netanyahu.
Netanyahu slammed the ceasefire with Iran announced by Trump earlier this summer and rejected the US president’s 15-point Board of Peace plan for Gaza.
Trump has still not endorsed Netanyahu ahead of the October election and has repeatedly dodged questions about the Israeli leader’s re-election prospects.
Two senior US officials told Axios this week that while Trump likes Netanyahu personally, he has grown frustrated with his policies and called him “his own worst enemy.”