Several artificial intelligence (AI) generated photos purporting to show the hardship of Palestinian civilians in relief camps amid a prolonged Israeli military offensive, are going viral on various social media platforms.
BOOM found that the images are not real; instead, they were created using artificial image generation tools that create pictures based on text inputs.
Some of the images show young children sleeping beneath a blanket while others show a woman cooking on a stove inside a marshy wet tent.
Israel and Hamas have been at war since early October 2023 when Hamas gunmen launched an unprecedented attack in Gaza. Israel's deadly retaliation, which has included relentless airstrikes and a ground invasion, has killed thousands in the Palestinian territory.
Despite actual images and videos documenting the suffering of civilians in Gaza, the AI generated images have gone viral.
Some of these synthetic photos are being shared with an Urdu caption that translates to, "The Muslims of Gaza have been grinded in the mill of oppression. The Muslim Ummah is sleep-deprived and self-absorbed".
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On Instagram, a user shared a photo of two children sleeping in a puddle of muddy water with a caption that claims, "We will Never forget. We will NEVER stop sharing. Free Palestine."
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Several other verified handles on X also posted the same photos with similar false claims.
BOOM also received one of the viral photos on its WhatsApp tipline number (7700906588) with a request to verify the photo.
Fact Check
BOOM found that four out of the five viral pictures bore a watermark stating, 'BingAi by LB'.
Following that lead, we ran a keyword search related to it and discovered an Instagram user Liena Bunkerz sharing numerous images featuring the same watermark. We also found that the user posted the four images along with hashtags such as "#bingimagecreator" and "#crazyimaginations."
Click here to view an archive of the post.
For further confirmation, we reached out to the Instagram user Liena Bunkerz to inquire about the viral pictures. Liena informed BOOM, "Yes, I generated these images using the AI-powered tool, Bing Image Creator."
Upon inspecting the fifth picture, which has gained widespread attention on social media, we also noticed various anomalies that are not typically present in original photographs.
We found that the puddle of water is unusually opaque. Additionally, we spotted an unusually large ear on one of the children and noted an abnormal smoothness and blurring along the edge between the two legs of the child.
We further noticed that the objects in the background of the image are unclear, creating a sense of visual distortion. Such anomalies are often found in artificially generated images, as these tools produce photos based on text inputs and often struggle to replicate real-world scenarios done to the last detail.
We then uploaded the image to the AI-image detection tool, Hive Detector, which indicated that the photo was highly likely to have been generated using AI.