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Washington:<\/strong> Among images of the bombed out homes and ravaged streets of Gaza, some stood out for the utter horror: bloodied, abandoned infants.<\/p>\n Viewed millions of times online since the war began, these images are deepfakes created using artificial intelligence. If you look closely you can see clues: fingers that curl oddly, or eyes that shimmer with an unnatural light \u2013 all telltale signs of digital deception.<\/p>\n The outrage the images were created to provoke, however, is all too real.<\/p>\n Pictures from the Israel-Hamas war have vividly and painfully illustrated AI\u2019s potential as a propaganda tool, used to create lifelike images of carnage. Since the war began last month, digitally altered ones spread on social media have been used to make false claims about responsibility for casualties or to deceive people about atrocities that never happened.<\/p>\n While most of the false claims circulating online about the war didn\u2019t require AI to create and came from more conventional sources, technological advances are coming with increasing frequency and little oversight. That\u2019s made the potential of AI to become another form of weapon starkly apparent, and offered a glimpse of what\u2019s to come during future conflicts, elections and other big events.<\/p>\n Don\u2019t swipe until you are ready to reveal the original image. Answers below.<\/strong><\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s going to get worse \u2013 a lot worse \u2013 before it gets better,\u201d said Jean-Claude Goldenstein, CEO of CREOpoint, a tech company based in San Francisco and Paris that uses AI to assess the validity of online claims. The company has created a database of the most viral deepfakes to emerge from Gaza. \u201cPictures, video and audio: with generative AI it\u2019s going to be an escalation you haven\u2019t seen.\u201d<\/p>\n In some cases, photos from other conflicts or disasters have been repurposed and passed off as new. In others, generative AI programs have been used to create images from scratch, such as one of a baby crying amidst bombing wreckage that went viral in the conflict\u2019s earliest days.<\/p>\n Other examples of AI-generated images include videos showing supposed Israeli missile strikes, or tanks rolling through ruined neighbourhoods, or families combing through rubble for survivors.<\/p>\n In many cases, the fakes seem designed to evoke a strong emotional reaction by including the bodies of babies, children or families. In the bloody first days of the war, supporters of both Israel and Hamas alleged the other side had victimised children and babies; deepfake images of wailing infants offered photographic \u201cevidence\u201d that was quickly held up as proof.<\/p>\n The propagandists who create such images are skilled at targeting people\u2019s deepest impulses and anxieties, said Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Centre for Countering Digital Hate, a non-profit that has tracked disinformation from the war. Whether it\u2019s a deepfake baby, or an actual image of an infant from another conflict, the emotional impact on the viewer is the same.<\/p>\n The more abhorrent the image, the more likely a user is to remember it and to share it, unwittingly spreading the disinformation further.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople are being told right now: look at this picture of a baby,\u201d Ahmed said. \u201cThe disinformation is designed to make you engage with it.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018Detection and trying to pull this stuff down is no longer the solution. We need to have a much bigger solution.\u2019<\/p>\n Around the world a number of start-up tech firms are working on new programs that can sniff out deepfakes, affix watermarks to images to prove their origin, or scan text to verify any specious claims that may have been inserted by AI.<\/p>\n \u201cThe next wave of AI will be: how can we verify the content that is out there? How can you detect misinformation? How can you analyse text to determine if it is trustworthy?\u201d said Maria Amelie, co-founder of Factiverse, a Norwegian company that has created an AI program that can scan content for inaccuracies or bias introduced by other AI programs.<\/p>\n Such programs would be of immediate interest to educators, journalists, financial analysts and others interested in rooting out falsehoods, plagiarism or fraud. Similar programs are being designed to sniff out doctored photos or video.<\/p>\n While this technology shows promise, those using AI to lie are often a step ahead, according to David Doermann, a computer scientist who led an effort at the US Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency to respond to the national security threats posed by AI-manipulated images.<\/p>\n \u201cEvery time we release a tool that detects this, our adversaries can use AI to cover up that trace evidence,\u201d said Doermann. \u201cDetection and trying to pull this stuff down is no longer the solution. We need to have a much bigger solution.\u201d<\/p>\nWe\u2019ve added four faked details in the image below. Can you tell the difference?<\/h3>\n