The creator of the controversial AI-generated video that President Donald Trump shares on social media says he never intended to be a “propaganda machine.” He also says it portrays a strange vision of Gaza featuring a bikini bearded dancer and a giant golden playing card statue.
Video creators Solo Avital and Ariel Vromen are two co-founders of Los Angeles-based Eyemix Visuals, who use artificial intelligence to create commercials and promotional media.
Speaking for the first time about the video, the pair told NBC News that it was born as a kind of pilot project when they experimented with AI software called Arcana.
They don’t know how their video went into Trump’s hands, but Volmen said Trump was appointed as Hollywood’s special ambassador in January and shared an early version with Mel Gibson, who worked with Imix and Arcana on previous projects. Gibson told them he shares some of the creators’ other jobs with people close to Trump, but the creators said he denied sharing the Gaza video with the president. Requests for an interview with Gibson were rejected by representatives.
As part of testing the AI software, Avital and Vromen tried to create a video with an eight-hour turnaround. However, they had not decided on their topic until Trump announced some strange ideas for the future of Gaza.
“It was the exact same moment when Trump announced this on TV. Let’s have a bit of satire,” Avital said.
On February 4, at a press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump suggested that the US would at least temporarily relocate Palestinians to other countries and “level the site” to create a “Middle Eastern Riviera.”
Vomen said he was in Las Vegas when Trump made his proposal, which influenced the video’s ideas and aesthetics. “The idea was like Trump wanted to turn Gaza into Vegas,” Vomen said. “We wanted to have an internal laugh about it. It was a joke.”
The video, completed on February 6th, according to Avital and Vromen records, shows NBC News and tells about its vision, with the irrational depiction of Elon Musk eating a Pita, Trump sipping shirtless with Netanyahu, and raining on Palestinian children.
Avital and Vromen, who are originally from Israel and now resident in the US, each said the video was a satire and that it took Trump’s proposal and pushed it to an extreme level of imagination, but it wasn’t necessarily important. Vromen said he views Trump’s proposal as one of the few advanced policy proposals that can address the region’s long-standing deadlock.
“You looked at Trump Gaza and he said, ‘Hey, whether it’s good or bad, it’s good to cross the distance like it is now, whether it’s good,” he said. “There’s truth to humor, but I wasn’t going to be a propaganda machine.”
Trump’s proposal has sparked shockwaves around the world, with some analysts and politicians comparing the proposal to drive 2.2 million Palestinians to ethnic cleansing. Although supported by Israel and some in the US, Trump’s proposal was widely criticized, even by some allies. 1,200 people were killed and another 250 were lured after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, local Palestinian officials say Israel has killed more than 47,500 Palestinians.
Vromen explained that the bearded dancers in the video are intended to enjoy Hamas members. “Yes, it was rude, maybe it was portrayal,” he said.
“The true intention of this concrete piece – I thought Gaza would be very liberated and awakened,” Avital said.
After the duo finished the video, they shared it with a limited group of people. “We distributed it with a few groups of friends to get a response, just like we’re writing a draft script,” Vomen said. “I posted about three hours (IT) on Instagram, and I also started getting brands that I didn’t understand the context, so I removed it.”
Vromen is a film director and DJ and may be best known for the 2012 film The Iceman. It features Chris Evans, Winona Ryder, James Franco and Michael Shannon. He has 138,000 Instagram followers.
Online, the video didn’t appear to travel widely before Trump shared it on his page. NBC News discovered several pro-Israel social media accounts that Vromen shared the video a few days after it briefly posted, but did not cover notable traction forces a few weeks later.
Avital said he was shocked when Trump posted it on Instagram with the True Social and without a caption three weeks later.
He said he was surprised to find himself posting a video containing scenes of him dancing with a woman in a club that is not his wife, and that he said he was “standing in the heart of the city, erected as a golden statue like a dictator of sorts.”
“I’d never imagine in my life,” he said.
The two said they hope that Trump will give the video some context or provide some credibility.
“At least, one intention was like responding to the surprising news in the context that this was done with complicated intentions, and the other intentions were, ‘Hey, maybe there’s a vision behind it,'” Vomen said.
He also said he felt that Trump had taken the video without proper permission.
“It was made by an artist, so Trump stole our content,” Volmen said. “The Gaza Strip film is perfect and unique original content that has been removed from context and released by the US president.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Anna Kelly, deputy press agency at the White House, previously said, “As President Trump said, Gaza is not difficult for humans in its current state. President Trump is visionary, and his plan to involve the United States in rebuilding Gaza will allow Palestinians to resettle in new communities and improve the local situation for future generations.”
Generic AI helped to promote the boom in false political imagery, which has been particularly accepted by Trump and members of the GOP. Trump and Musk have frequently shared images generated by AIs that praise themselves and slander others.
Arcana Labs CEO Jonathan Yunger called the video “complete madness,” but he welcomed the idea of artists expressing themselves through Arcana Labs’ platform.
“The video isn’t breaking the law as far as I’m concerned, and the artists are going to express themselves. What people decide to do with it is up to them,” Yunger said. “The fact that the president took it and posted it as his own is one of the most insane things I’ve ever seen.”
