Viral photo of children sleeping in muddy tents linked to Palestine debunked as AI-generated
A picture of children sleeping in a tent on muddy ground has spread on Facebook (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7). It is being claimed that the pictures are of the children of Palestine. However, a fact-check organization from Palestine confirmed that artificial intelligence, or AI tools has been used to create the images.
With the picture of two children sleeping side by side on the mud-spattered ground, one user in Bangladesh wrote in a Facebook post, “Is it tolerable? How can I sleep peacefully after seeing this scene? Ya Rabb! You become sufficient for the oppressed. Take revenge on their behalf.” Along with it is written, “Free Palestine”.
To confirm the legitimacy of the aforementioned photo, a reverse search has yielded a fact-check report. A report published by the Palestinian fact-checking organization ‘Kashif’ claims that artificial intelligence (AI) produced the picture of the two lying children. The organization confirmed the use of AI by monitoring multiple content of the image.
In fact, this is not the first incident of AI-powered images of Palestinian children being shared online. Apart from the pictures of dozing kids, in the last year, artificial intelligence (AI) generated images depicting the Israel-Hamas conflict had gained widespread attention.
David Doermann explained ways of avoiding the confusion caused by AI-generated images. Internet users must discover better tools and strategies to deal with the political and social issues that artificial intelligence (AI) is posing, according to the University at Buffalo professor, who spoke with AP News. To help users discern reality from fiction, more investment needs to be made on digital literacy initiatives.
He said, “Trying to detect and remove these deepfakes is no longer the solution. We have to come up with bigger solutions.”
