JERUSALEM – After the Palestinian terror group Hamas carried out its deadly attack in southern Israel over the past two weeks, killing about 1,400 Israelis, there are fears that a new front could be opening in the old war between Israelis and Palestinians – the digital one Area .
While manipulated images and fake news have long been part of the Middle East’s war arsenal, with the introduction of easy-to-use generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools less than a year ago, it is very likely that deepfake images will soon make an appearance as well the war front.
“Hamas and other Palestinian factions have already spread gruesome images from other conflicts as if they were Palestinian victims of Israeli attacks, so there is nothing unique about this operation,” David May, research manager at the Foundation for Defense Democracies, told Fox News Digital .
He described how Hamas has been known in the past to intimidate journalists from reporting on the use of human shields in the Palestinian enclave, and to stage images of toddlers and teddy bears buried in the rubble.
“Hamas controls the narrative in Gaza,” said May, who closely follows Hamas activities, adding that “AI-generated images will further complicate an Israeli-Palestinian conflict that is already rife with disinformation.”
There have already been some reports of re-uploaded images from various conflicts, and last week a heartbreaking photo of a crying baby crawling through the rubble in Gaza was revealed to be an AI creation.
“I call it improved fake news,” said Dr. Tal Pavel, founder and director of CyBureau, an Israel-based institute for the study of cyber policy, told Fox News Digital. “We already know the term fake news, which in most cases refers to visual or written content that is manipulated or placed in a false context. AI or deepfake is when we take these images and bring them to life in video clips.”
Pavel called the emergence of AI-generated deepfake visuals “one of the biggest threats to democracy.”
Fox News’ Ruth Marks Eglash contributed to this update.