Generative AI Is Playing a Surprising Role in Israel-Hamas Disinformation
By Will Bedingfield
In the weeks since Hamas launched its October 7 surprise attack on Israel, the ensuing conflict has generated an unprecedented wave of disinformation, an “algorithmically driven fog of war” that has tripped up major new organizations and left social media companies floundering...
Setting aside the apocalyptic view, it’s easier to study how generative AI has actually slotted into the existing disinformation ecosystem. It is, for example, far more prevalent than it was at the outset of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, argues Hany Farid, a professor at the UC Berkeley School of Information.
Farid characterizes the technology as a “specter” hanging over audio and video that purports to come from the conflict, and that he receives half a dozen to a dozen calls daily from reporters enquiring about veracity. “For a lot of people, the ability to dismiss inconvenient facts is absolutely playing a role in this conflict,” he says...
Hany Farid is a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Sciences and the School of Information at UC Berkeley. He specializes in digital forensics.
