PM’s aide Urich used ChatGPT to create pro-Qatar messaging campaign — report

Jonatan Urich, a top aide to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, used ChatGPT to come up with ideas for a pro-Qatar messaging campaign in 2024, almost a year into the war in Gaza, according to a Monday report citing materials from a police investigation.

Urich is a key suspect in the so-called “Qatargate” affair, which concerns allegations that Netanyahu’s advisers did public relations work for Qatar while they were employed by the Prime Minister’s Office, including by placing pro-Qatar stories in the media. Urich also faces charges in connection with a 2024 leak of classified documents.

According to Channel 12, Urich initially told police investigators that he had “no connection” to a pro-Qatar campaign emanating from the Prime Minister’s Office. He called such a campaign “unacceptable.”

Police then reportedly confronted Urich with his ChatGPT history from September 2024, which showed multiple occasions in which he asked the OpenAI chatbot to build a “strategic plan to change global awareness” of Qatar’s image. The report added that Urich asked for messaging targeted toward three audiences: the Israeli public, Jewish communities abroad, and thought leaders in the US.

Urich also reportedly requested “more ideas to improve the image of Qatar’s prime minister and emir.”

The report did not say how it obtained transcripts from the investigation, or how police gained access to Urich’s ChatGPT conversations.

Urich reportedly responded, “I don’t remember what I asked ChatGPT, which I ask about a lot of subjects. I never acted or did anything for Qatar’s benefit in Israel, in Israeli media, with Israelis, or with the prime minister.”

The report provoked an outcry from Netanyahu’s opponents in the October 27 election.

“According to this evening’s report, the person closest to Netanyahu activated a campaign of awareness and psychological terror against Israel’s citizens,” Gadi Eisenkot, Netanyahu’s chief rival, wrote on X. “A reasonable prime minister would have removed a person like that from his surroundings tonight. Not Netanyahu. He is unfit to serve.”

Former prime minister Naftali Bennett repeated his contention that Qatargate is the “most treasonous affair in the country’s history” and referenced the millions Qatar sent to Gaza every month over the course of years with Israel’s approval to the benefit of Hamas.

He called the Channel 12 report “another piece of evidence that the hand that funded the Nukhba [Hamas’s elite fighting force], which butchered us, is the same hand that funded the person closest to the prime minister.”

Bennett added, “Urich tried to whitewash Qatar, and implicated Netanyahu, who decided to keep him in his position to cover up the betrayal.”

This is not the first time Urich has gotten into hot water with an AI tool. Last week, his WhatsApp correspondence appeared online after he reportedly used AI to build a media-tracking tool, posted the code online, and caused a security breach.

Leaked screenshots showed purported messages that Urich exchanged with several journalists and political strategists.

Haaretz reported last month that Urich had used Anthropic’s Claude engine to create a tool that would scan some 50 news sources every 90 seconds and generate summaries of statements about Netanyahu, his wife Sara, and Netanyahu’s Likud party.

Days later, the Calcalist newspaper reported that Urich, a key suspect in the so-called Qatargate affair, had linked his WhatsApp account to a UAE-based third-party service, Ultramsg. The service’s terms and conditions reportedly gave the Gulf state broad access to his WhatsApp messages, in accordance with Emirati law.