If the virtual image of a helicopter shot down in mid-flight has real consequences of disinformation: The war between Israel and Hamas, like the recent conflicts, is pouring hyper-realistic but misleading video game content onto social networks.
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A viral video circulating on Facebook entitled “Two Israeli helicopters shot down by Hamas”, another about the “demonstration” of the “brave Malian armed forces” against jihadist groups or even the one about a “Russian helicopter” against a “Ukrainian” . Howitzer”…
All claim to report real collisions with missiles, tank explosions by drones or downed fighter jets in a realistic setting of burned cities. In reality, these images come from “Arma 3,” a fighting video game developed by independent studio Bohemia Interactive based in the Czech Republic.
Numerous clips from war video games have continued to be redirected over the past decade to create authentic images of conflicts ranging from the war in Syria to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
In 2017, for example, the Russian army published on its official Twitter and Facebook accounts black-and-white aerial photos that it said were taken on the Iraqi-Syrian border, presenting them as “irrefutable” evidence provided by the United States had “covers” for the Islamic State group… before the NGO Conflict Intelligence Team (CIT) compared one of these images to the war video game “AC-130 Gunship Simulator: Special Ops Squadron.”
After quickly deleting these images, the Russian army assured the state agency RIA-Novosti that it was a “mistake” by a civilian employee.
“Viral” potential
These fake news stories are regularly denounced by digital verification media outlets such as AFP, which has uncovered several, including one from October 12th that claims to show Israeli helicopters shot down by the Palestinian movement Hamas, translated into several languages and shared on multiple platforms (Facebook, X, TikTok).
“These user-generated videos have the potential to go viral and are massively shared by social media users, sometimes even by mainstream media or official government institutions around the world,” developers at Bohemia Interactive complained on October 10 on the studio website.
To the point of deceiving certain media: In November, the Romanian broadcaster Romania TV, for example, presented an old video from “Arma 3” that showed fighting in Ukraine, the images of which were also commented on by a former defense minister and a former intelligence chief.
How was this possible, considering that this video game disinformation is less sophisticated and easier to verify than “deepfakes,” those “hyperfakes” that use artificial intelligence (AI) to create ultra-realistic images?
“As the visual representation of video games improves, computer-generated images can appear real at first glance,” Claire Wardle, co-director of the Information Futures Lab at Brown University in the United States, told AFP in January.
“It is the spectacular increase in realism of these war simulation games that worries those who are exposed to this type of content and who may mistake them for real images,” adds French expert on online extremism and conspiracy sites Tristan Mendès France.
Especially since a game like “Arma 3” also has the special feature of being largely modifiable by players, who can create new confrontation areas, vehicles, weapons, equipment or scenarios very easily and with little effort. fresh, like image generators via generative AI, like Midjourney.
To avoid falling into the trap, the developers provided a series of visual and audio cues to help distinguish video game images from real images, such as explosions that “even modern video games” must have. It is difficult to portray them “naturally”. Away.
In a count sent to AFP on Wednesday, social media monitoring company Visibrain counted 209.6 million messages related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since October 7.
For comparison, that’s 84% more than the volume seen at the 2022 FIFA World Cup, one of the most talked-about events in the world.