{"id":518842,"date":"2026-04-08T03:51:13","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T03:51:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/518842\/"},"modified":"2026-04-08T03:51:13","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T03:51:13","slug":"the-fog-of-war-through-ai-generated-images","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/518842\/","title":{"rendered":"The Fog of War Through AI-Generated Images"},"content":{"rendered":"

In case you missed it, April 2 was the 10th annual International Fact-Checking Day<\/a>. The choice of date is intentional \u2013 the day after April Fool\u2019s Day, that annual homage to lying<\/a>, or at least to the fun, harmless kind of lies<\/a>. (Sorry if you clicked!) It makes sense that the following day would be dedicated to tuning into our internal lie detectors \u2013 a chance to hone our critical thinking and discover new resources and tools to help us in our quest to separate fact from fiction<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Yet, given the extraordinary rise in AI<\/a>-generated digital content, a single day seems quaint, like a single day of exercise after months of dietary overindulgence. This is particularly true in the context of the United States-Israel war with Iran, during which people have tasked AI with generating vast amounts of misinformation, often in the form of images and videos, with the goal of making money via the \u201cmisinformation economy.” Unfortunately, these types of images can be particularly powerful persuasive tools. We\u2019re far less skeptical when we \u201csee\u201d something with our own eyes, or at least if we think we do (Seo, 2020).<\/p>\n

This can be particularly dangerous in life-or-death arenas like war. Just in the last week or so, a range of news outlets, including the BBC<\/a>, have called the explosion of AI-driven misinformation related to the U.S.-Israel war with Iran \u201cunprecedented.\u201d Digital media expert Timothy Graham told this to the BBC: \u201cWhat used to require professional video production can now be done in minutes with AI tools. The barrier to creating convincing synthetic conflict footage has essentially collapsed.”<\/p>\n

A Reality Check<\/p>\n

Sofia Rubison is a senior editor at NewsGuard, an organization that rates the reliability of global news sources and seems to concur with that \u201cunprecedented\u201d descriptor. Recently, on the podcast Question Everything<\/a>, Rubison conveyed her expert opinion that the \u201csheer volume of fake videos and photos that were being spread online\u201d is an increase from the past. When asked whether this level of AI videos is new, she said, \u201cI definitely think so.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to its reports on the reliability of news sources, NewsGuard posts a weekly false claim in its Reality Check newsletter. It shares claims that have both gone viral and are especially likely to be harmful. They recently investigated the claim that a video of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu drinking coffee at a coffee shop was a deepfake. The video was posted as \u201cproof of life\u201d<\/a> in response to false claims that he was dead, yet many people, including a number of amateur online sleuths, thought it was a deepfake. These claims were widely circulated, leading this claim to meet the NewsGuard criteria: It went viral and it had the capacity to cause harm.<\/p>\n

Flawed AI Detectors<\/p>\n

There are tools that any of us can use to assess whether videos are real or AI, including Grok, which is integrated into X. But these tools are not always accurate. As Rubison says, \u201cGrok, the AI account, is actually one of the biggest spreaders of false claims on this platform.\u201d She continues, \u201cX, the platform does not purport that their model is able to accurately fact-check false claims or that it\u2019s able to accurately detect when something is AI-generated or not.\u201d Despite that, Grok\u2019s responses can feel like a definitive verdict.<\/p>\n

A better AI detector, from the company Hive, runs tests on videos to determine if they are AI-generated. Hive is more accurate than many other detectors, but in the case of the Netanyahu video, it still determined that there was an over 95% likelihood that the Netanyahu was AI-generated. Hive was wrong in this case\u2014the video was real\u2014an indication that even the best AI detectors are not flawless. Rubison says that NewsGuard does use Hive to make an initial assessment, but never relies solely on one platform to make a determination as to whether a video is AI or not.<\/p>\n

With respect to the Netanyahu video, Rubinson explained that her team at NewsGuard conducted an extensive fact-check beyond online tools and found it to be real. For one, she noted that Reuters, a respected news organization, looked at stock footage from the caf\u00e9, which matched the background in the video. In addition, the caf\u00e9 itself posted photos and videos of the event on social media<\/a>, which also matched up. It would have required many, many people colluding for this to be an AI video.<\/p>\n

Every Day Is Fact-Checking Day<\/p>\n

Given the harm that AI-generated content can wreak, particularly in the context of war, we urge you to make every day Fact-Checking Day. For one, you can sign up for Reality Check<\/a> or follow one of the many fact-checking websites<\/a> aimed at debunking misinformation. Incorporating a fact-checking site into your regular reading does two things: It can help identify lies that you\u2019ve encountered elsewhere in your information intake, and, more importantly, it is a regular reminder to think critically about the images and videos that form the constant \u201cnoise\u201d<\/a> of your social media feed. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In case you missed it, April 2 was the 10th annual International Fact-Checking Day. The choice of date…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":518843,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-518842","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-kingdom","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-great-britain","10":"tag-greatbritain","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=518842"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518842\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/518843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=518842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=518842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=518842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}