On October 12, the official account of the state of Israel posted an image of a tiny, charred body, claiming that the image showed a baby killed by Hamas during the attacks carried out on October 7. In the hours after the image was posted, social media users began to comment, saying that the image had been generated by artificial intelligence, according to the AI detection tool AI or Not. However, several experts – as well as the company behind AI or Not – have said these findings were wrong and that the photo is likely real.
If you only have a minute
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A number of social media accounts, most of them either American or expressly pro-Palestinian, have said on X (formerly Twitter) that the photo of the burned body of a child shared by the state of Israel was generated by AI, based on the results of an AI detection tool called AI or Not.
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However, AI or Not actually said that the result was a false positive. Several specialists in image analysis agreed, saying that the photo was not AI-generated.
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A number of people claimed that the image of the charred body had been generated using a photo of a puppy. However, when we talked to a specialist in image analysis, he said the photo of the dog was actually the doctored image.
The fact check, in detail
On October 12, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu published [warning: disturbing images] photos of the burned bodies of children in mortuary sacks on his X account (formerly Twitter). In the caption, he said that the photos showed “babies murdered and burned by the Hamas monsters” during their attack on October 7. The photos were picked up and reposted by the X account of the state of Israel a few hours later.
However, many American and pro-Palestinian social media users blamed the country for having generated one of the images using artificial intelligence.
A number of tweets, including one viewed more than 22 million times,…
