GoKawiilis a reporter focusing on film, TV, and pop culture. Before The Verge, he wrote about comic books, labor, race, and more at io9 and Gizmodo for almost five years.
Donald Trump has spun the recent rescue of a downed airman whose fighter jet was destroyed behind Iranian borders as a resounding success. But the story is very different in one of the many viral, AI-generated Lego videos that have been produced by Iranian content creation group Explosive Media in the weeks since the US and Israel began dropping bombs on the country. In Explosive Media’s music video take on how things played out, the US military is a joke for losing multiple planes and helicopters, and spending “$100 million just to save one guy.”
The video’s shots of Lego jets exploding into $100 bills and golden coins reinforce the idea that the US is wasting taxpayer dollars just to be outmaneuvered by Iranian forces. And the accompanying AI-generated lyrics send a clear message about Iran being ready to do it all again if and when the US strikes next.
Explosive Media’s content plainly reads as propaganda. But the simplicity of its messaging has helped turn the group’s videos to a viral phenomenon. The videos are being shared across the internet, and people — many of them located within the US — are praising them for the way they humiliate Trump and urge viewers to remember that before this war began, the Trump administration was busy downplaying the president’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein. On TikTok, unofficial uploads of the videos have racked up thousands of comments from people cheering Explosive Media on and saying that their videos and surprisingly catchy AI songs are more informative than what’s being reported by Western outlets.
By playing into the public’s disdain for Trump and his peers, groups like Explosive Media are helping Iran win a meme-fueled war of ideas and perceptions. And at a time when the White House has tried to present itself as having a deep understanding of how to shape online discourse, it seems very much like the Iranians have Trump outgunned.
Explosive Media’s official YouTube and Instagram pages were both recently taken down — YouTube says that their videos violated the platform’s policies regarding spam, deceptive practices, and scams. But it’s not hard to find the group’s AI-generated shorts lambasting the US and Israel’s attacks on Iran. Even if you aren’t keeping up with news about the war, you’ve probably seen some of Explosive Media’s work while doomscrolling through X or TikTok. The way Explosive Media has been consistently putting out new videos almost every day that explicitly comment on recent events — despite the internet blackout — makes the group seem like it could be a large outfit with ties to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ content creation machine. This would make the group an extension of the same governmental organization that turned Iran into an authoritarian theocracy in which political dissent has been violently repressed.
But when I recently spoke with a member of the group via the Telegram channel linked in multiple Explosive Video accounts, they claimed that they are a team of about 10 people who are operating independently from Iranian state media. Explosive Media claims it sees maintaining its independence and being relatable to Gen Z (their peers) as important elements to achieving their larger goals. And the representative stressed that using Lego aesthetics to spread their message has been a key part of building a global audience.
“Lego is a universal language,” the Explosive Media member said. “It conveys messages easily, it’s playful, it doesn’t require extreme realism, yet it can include astonishing detail.”
It is immediately clear that Explosive Media’s animations are made with AI. But their content feels different than most slop polluting the internet, and not just because the war is unpopular. Each video tells a cohesive story with clearly defined characters whose (general) visual consistency helps you follow their narrative arcs even if you aren’t watching with the sound on. Explosive Media maintains a running list of potential concepts that could be turned into videos, but each project begins with a script, which is used to generate AI footage and an accompanying song before it is all merged together using post-production software.
The member of Explosive Media I talked to explained that they are using generative AI “as a tool to present truths in a compelling way and to break through walls of censorship” that have negatively impacted the way people see Iranians. To the group, there is little difference between gen AI and any other kind of technology that “can be used for good or bad,” and they see their videos as prime examples of how dynamic Iranian storytelling can be.
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