Brick by Brick: How One Creator’s AI‑Powered Lego Shorts Became Iran’s Secret Propaganda Engine
By converting tiny plastic bricks into AI-driven micro-films, a Tehran hobbyist unknowingly forged a covert propaganda engine that now underpins much of Iran’s digital messaging. The Brick‑Built Influence Engine: How One Creat...
The Hobbyist Behind the Blocks
- Meet Amir Rezaei, a 27-year-old software engineer with a passion for Lego.
- His YouTube channel started with build-along tutorials, later pivoting to short animations.
- Using GPT-4 and Stable Diffusion, he scripted narratives that mirrored state messaging.
Amir’s transition from hobby to propaganda was accidental. The first clip, a 15-second “Victory” montage, was shared on Telegram, where it trended among youth circles.
Within weeks, state-aligned media outlets requested his services, offering a steady stream of content that blended entertainment with subtle persuasion.
His timing coincided with the 2023 surge in social media censorship, creating a vacuum that his short-form content filled.
AI Meets Lego: Building the Mini-Movies
Amir leveraged GPT-4 to draft scripts in Persian, then fed them into Stable Diffusion to generate frame-by-frame visuals. The process takes 2-3 hours per clip.
The AI’s language model ensures the dialogue aligns with official rhetoric, while the image generator captures the nostalgic appeal of bricks, making the propaganda feel harmless. Myth‑Busting the Toy‑Story Myth: How a Solo Cre...
He also integrated voice-over synthesis, using a deep-fake model trained on state TV anchors, adding authenticity without revealing his identity.
By 2025, Amir’s library had grown to 200 shorts, each under 30 seconds, optimized for mobile consumption.
These videos are posted on platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and local apps, bypassing heavy censorship checks.
From Hobby to Propaganda: How the Shorts Spread
State actors used the clips as “soft power” tools, embedding them in news feeds and echoing official narratives. From Hobby to State Weapon: Inside the Tech Sta...
Through algorithmic amplification, the shorts reached millions of teens, who shared them as memes, unaware of their political subtext.
In 2026, a study in the Journal of Digital Propaganda noted a 35% increase in engagement on state-aligned content that employed mini-films.
According to the