By Karen Rebelo
A viral photo purporting to show young Israeli men flying back home to enlist in the armed forces amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict is AI-generated and fake.
The photo supposedly shows the inside of an aircraft where several young men and a few women can be seen seated.
BOOM was able to ascertain that the photo was not real and was made with the help of generative-artificial intelligence (AI). The image shows several anomalies that are characteristic of photos created using generative-AI.
Social media platforms such as X (formerly Twitter) are drowning in a deluge of misinformation and disinformation after Palestinian militant group Hamas ambushed Israeli forces on October 7, 2023. Researchers and fact-checkers have warned of the use of generative-AI in compounding the misinformation problem.
The synthetic image is viral on X and Instagram. Here are archives of such posts.
FACT CHECK
BOOM was able to detect that the image was created using generative AI.
We uploaded the photo to INVID - a video and image analysis tool and then used the magnifier optin to view the photo in detail.
A closer look at the image shows several anomalies including misshapen fingers and ear lobes that look elf-like. The image also shows a "passenger" with more than five fingers on one of his hands. These anomalies are generally seen in AI-generated imagery and are not seen in real images even if they are of poor resolution or blurry.
Image shows AI generated ear lob that looks elf like
Image shows fingers blending into a face
Image shows multiple fingers on one hand
As we scrutinize the photo further especially the background, more discrepancies are visible. On the right-hand side of the image, the seats blend into human figures.
We also uploaded the image to two AI detection tools available online Hugging Face and Detecting-AI.com, which showed a score of nearly 87% that the photo was generated by AI.
