'You stupid Smotrich': AI generates video of Israeli lawmakers trading barbs
Building off a viral social media trend with AI-made videos of Trump, Biden and Obama, this TikTok shows Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir and Smotrich playing video games and trading insults.
By JERUSALEM POST STAFF FROM L: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir(photo credit: YONATAN SINDEL/FLASH90/CANVA)
A viral craze that has been sweeping the Internet for the past several months now has an Israeli twist.
TikTok user Lil BB (@goldamemespt) recently uploaded a video to the popular social media platform featuring an artificial intelligence-generated video with Israeli lawmakers Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich playing the video game Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) together while trading profanity-laden insults.
The video, which was uploaded on Friday, has already accrued over 20,000 views at the time of writing. The TikTok user also only follows three accounts – those of Netanyahu, Smotich and Ben-Gvir.
The concept behind the video is rooted in a trend that has been circulating online for the past several months which is much the same as the Israeli iteration, only it featured US presidents. The aforementioned trend tends to feature AI-generated speech mimicking the voices of US President Joe Biden as well as former presidents Donald Trump and Barack Obama.
In these videos, the three presidents are sometimes accompanied by a number of figures ranging from Queen Elizabeth II and George Bush to Ben Shapiro and Andrew Tate and do everything from playing video games to making anime tier lists to discussing lunches served in the elementary school cafeteria.
This video featuring Israeli politicians is essentially the same, although the AI platform that was used fell short of mimicking the accents of Ben-Gvir and Smotrich.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is seen in Jerusalem, on March 13, 2023. (credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM/THE JERUSALEM POST)
What did Netanyahu, Smotrich and Ben-Gvir say?
The video begins with the AI-generated voice of Netanyahu, who is pictured sitting at his desk with cheesecake and wearing green gamer headphones, asking Ben-Gvir – who he refers to as "Kahane-guy" (in reference to the minister's previous association with the Kach movement of Meir Kahane) – where "Kitty Smotrich" is.
Smotrich, who is shown wearing cat-ear headphones, then signs on and says he was in the "State-Stars country or some s**t, cooking up some speeches."
This promptly leads Netanyahu to insult Smotrich's English, a topic that earned the real-life finance minister much ridicule in Israel. While in reality, Smotrich went along with this ridicule in good humor, in the AI video, he retorts to Netanyahu that he "f***ed your weird blonde-haired wife."
The video ends with Smotrich sending inappropriate pornographic content to Netanyahu's email, which Ben-Gvir dubbed as being "so haram, bro" and the finance minister asking Netanyahu if he'll "cry to Sara about it."
How did Israelis react to the prime minister's barbs on TikTok?
While the video itself is in English as most AI platforms aren't equipped yet to handle Hebrew, the comment section was flooded with Hebrew, showing that it clearly reached an Israeli audience.
Some commenters reacted with laughter at the poster of Andrew Tate wearing a suit in front of an Israeli flag that was posted in Ben-Gvir's fake office.
Others asked why the video was in English, or when it would be translated into Hebrew.
However, not a single commenter ever questioned if it was authentic. Presumably, this is due to one of the most repeated comments on the video: That Smotrich's English here is far too good for it to be real.
