As the Israel-Hamas war risked tipping into regional conflict, AI-generated footage spread in social media posts falsely claiming it showed several Middle Eastern nations attacking Israel. The clips, which garnered hundreds of thousands of views online, were in fact made by an AI content creator, while experts told AFP they showed signs of manipulation.
"Israel was under siege by seven countries," reads Chinese-language overlaid text on a TikTok video shared on October 6, 2024.
"Israel bombed Gaza and Lebanon. Did you ever think you would see this day? It's miserable and the people are in a terrible state," the caption read.
The TikTok post shows two clips of a destroyed cityscape, with skyscrapers engulfed in flames and smoke rising into the night sky.
The video racked up more than 720,000 views on TikTok and also circulated in X and Instagram posts that claimed it showed Iranian strikes on Israel or Israel attacking Lebanon.
Anger over Israel's ongoing military campaign in Gaza has stoked violence involving Iran-backed groups in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria and Yemen (archived link).
The war was triggered by Hamas's unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, which resulted in the deaths of 1,208 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures that include hostages killed in captivity.
Militants abducted 251 hostages, 96 of whom remain in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed more than 45,000 people in Gaza, a majority of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run health ministry. The United Nations considers those figures reliable.
AI-generated clips
A reverse image search of the video followed by keyword searches found the clips posted by a TikTok account that regularly shares AI-generated footage of explosions (archived link).
The account "digital.n0mad" describes itself as an "AI artist" and labels its content as "fake videos" and "AI art."
The TikTok account posted the videos on September 12 and October 1 with the disclaimer: "Creator labelled as AI-generated" (archived links here and here).
According to TikTok, "creators apply this label themselves to indicate that their content was completely generated or significantly edited by AI" (archived link).
Below is a screenshot comparison of the falsely shared video (left) and the video labelled as "AI-generated" by the TikTok creator (right):
Shu Hu, head of Purdue University's Machine Learning and Media Forensics Lab in the United States, told AFP the video was "obviously AI-generated" (archived link).
He pointed to flames burning and shifting with the wind in the video that was "entirely inconsistent" with the speed of vehicles below, which "strongly indicates tampering".
In the second clip, the surface lines of buildings appear distorted and bend in "counterfactual ways", he added.
AFP has debunked a wave of misinformation around the Israel-Hamas war here.