Pro-Hamas accuse Israel of using artificial intelligence to create a photo of the body of a burned Israeli baby. But the company whose tool made this detection possible assures that “the result is inconclusive.”
In times of propaganda, artificial intelligence can be used to create false images… but it also serves to discredit the other side’s images. As part of the macabre communication war over the killed children, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu published on the social network Twitter (renamed X) three “horrifying photos of babies murdered and burned by the monsters of Hamas,” which had also been presented to the head of Hamas American diplomacy Antony Blinken. These images show the body of a baby with a blurry, bloodied face lying on a plastic sheet and two small, completely burned bodies lying on a stretcher and outside a body bag. They were then shared by many Internet users who supported Israel to highlight the atrocities committed by Hamas.
Many pro-Hamas accounts, including the Hamas News Agency, quickly claimed that the image of one of the burned corpses was generated by artificial intelligence. Their demonstration relies on the use of the website Optic Ai Or Not, which claims to “deliver highly accurate results” by “using advanced algorithms and machine learning techniques to analyze images and detect signs of AI generation.” Our service compares the input image with known patterns, artifacts and features from various AI models and human-generated images to determine the origin of the content.”
Conflicting results
According to the numerous screenshots posted on Twitter, Optic Ai Or Not determined that “this image was generated by AI” through testing the image posted by the Israeli government and its supporters.
The reliability of these various tools is regularly questioned. In September 2023, investigative site Bellingcat, an expert in open-source image search and authentication, closely tested the Optic Ai Or Not detection tool and concluded that its reliability varied depending on the quality of the images. “The fact that AI or Not has a high error rate when identifying compressed AI images, particularly photorealistic images, significantly reduces its usefulness to open source researchers. While “AI or Not” represents a significant advance in the field of AI image recognition, it is far from the pinnacle,” Bellingcat noted.
In the case of the photo of the burned baby, the demonstration is all the more questionable because the result suggested by Optic Ai or Not seems to vary depending on the request. Therefore, CheckNews conducted the same test by submitting the image posted by the Israeli Prime Minister’s Twitter account. And the result isn’t the same as what the pro-Hamas claimed to have found: Optic Ai Or Not actually tells us that “it’s probably a…” [contenu généré par un] human. […] AI or not, can produce inaccurate results. Multiple accounts on X took the same step and received the same message.
“The result is inconclusive,” recognizes Optic Ai Or Not
The company Optic Ai Or Not also returned to these different results in a message published on Twitter. She explains that after verification, “the result is inconclusive because the photo was compressed and altered to delete the ID card.” The photo of the burned body posted by the Israeli prime minister was pixelated and appeared to be depicted on a label that may have contained personal information. Open Ai Or Not said it “updates its algorithm daily to continue to fight misinformation,” a way of saying it’s not perfect, and promised to “continue to update the information here as we learn more.”
The company AI Or Not therefore says that its tool was unable to verify the authenticity of the photo published by the Israeli government and therefore cannot confirm that it is “an image generated by artificial intelligence”.
Beyond this image, numerous testimonies report the discovery of bodies of victims burned by Hamas terrorists, including families, children and babies, particularly in the kibbutz of Be’eri or Kfar Aaz. In a report at the Rabbinate Center for the Identification of the Dead in Israel, the center-left Israeli newspaper Haaretz, which is very critical of Benjamin Netanyahu’s policies, reported, among other things, “evidence of the extreme cruelty of the Hamas terrorists.” “, witness statements mentioning bodies that were very difficult to identify because they were burned.
CheckNews was also able to view images of burned corpses broadcast on a Telegram channel by Israeli rescue teams who portrayed themselves as “arriving first in the areas liberated from the Hamas presence.” On October 11, they released a photo that appeared to show “what appears to be a young child burned alive in a house” in Kfar Aza.