Nearly 45 million people, including top Bollywood and Hollywood celebrities, have shared on Twitter and Instagram an image that depicts tent camps for displaced Palestinians arranged to form the words “All Eyes On Rafah”.
Amid international condemnation over Israeli airstrikes that triggered a fire killing 45 people in a tent camp in Rafah late Sunday, the “All Eyes On Rafah” campaign gained momentum on social media with the world drawing attention to Israel’s continuous bombing of the Gaza Strip.
The image shows the words “All Eyes On Rafah” spelt out in rows of white tents with a backdrop of mountains in the distance. A question that comes to mind is whether the image is real or artificial intelligence (AI)-generated.
Reality of viral image
Unlike other graphic images and videos emerging from Gaza, the latest image is likely to have been generated with the help of AI, according to experts.
On social media, the image has even been criticised by some for replacing the “fake” one with the distressing footage of what has been happening in Gaza.
Felix M Simon, a communication researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute, said he is “confident” that the said image “was generated with the help of AI,” The Washington Post reported.
Simon noted that it “bears various visual hallmarks that are typical for AI systems — especially a certain blurriness.”
The report states that no cleanly cut rows of tents as well as a sloping snow-topped mountain can be seen near Rafah’s encampments in reality.
These tents have been in fields and buildings, while this region in Gaza’s southernmost city, where around 1.5 million people have sought shelter after fleeing Israeli bombings, is dotted with palm trees and the occasional sandy hill.
The image could have been generated by AI to bypass Meta’s content moderation policies and ensure that it doesn’t get taken down for depiction of violence or destruction.
The footage from the deadly airstrike on Sunday depicts a completely different image of Rafah compared with the viral one — charred bodies, a man carrying a headless child, flames tearing through fabric and so on.
The Meta-owned company has credited a user named ‘shahv4012’ as the first person to share the image in a Stories template.
Matt Navarra, a social media expert, noted that the uncontroversial nature of the post might be the reason behind its massive reach. “It doesn’t depict real-world violence. Although it feels sanitised, that is what has enabled it to have the level of viral reach that it has received so far,” Navarra said.
He further pointed out that the social media platform has not yet labelled the viral image to let users know it was produced with the help of AI.
The slogan mentioned in the image has reportedly originated from a statement by Rick Peeperkorn, director of the World Health Organization’s Office of the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
He made this comment in February earlier this year shortly after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered an evacuation plan for Rafah ahead of attacks aimed at what he then claimed were the last remaining strongholds of Hamas.
So far, a total of 36,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s Gaza offensive, the region’s health ministry has said.
Israel launched its onslaught after Hamas-led militants attacked southern Israeli communities on October 7 last year, killing around 1,200 people and seizing more than 250 hostages.