An AI-generated image misrepresented as a real photo of Palestinian children sleeping in swampy tents. - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
February 6, 2024
A photo of two children sleeping in muddy waters under a dilapidated tent is going viral on social media. The description of this post reads – ”We will NEVER stop sharing ᖴᖇᗴᗴ ᑭᗩᒪᗴSTIᑎᗴ !!🇵🇸”, which indicates that the viral photo portrays the harsh conditions in which children in Palestine are living. Let’s fact-check this claim through this article.
Claim: This photo shows children in Palestine sleeping in harsh conditions.
Fact: The viral photo is not a real one. It is an image generated by an AI tool-Bing Image Creator. Hence, the claim made in the post is False.
To fact-check the viral image, we carried out a reverse image search, which directed us to a tweet and an Instagram post, both containing the same photo but with a watermark, ‘BingAi by LB’.
This Pic just made me realize that I should be greatful for the little things I have.
Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. * It is a great truth because once we truly see this truth, we transcend it.#AFCON2023 #TotalEnergiesAFCON2023 pic.twitter.com/XevldysZmJ
Further, we conducted a keyword search on the internet by adding ‘BingAi by LB’ in our keywords, which led us to the Instagram profile of a user named @lb_tengkorak. Along with the viral photo, this profile contained a series of similar images portraying people living in swampy tents, all bearing the same watermark.
A post shared by Liena Bunkerz (LB) (@lb_tengkorak)
The description of these images included hashtags such as #bingimagecreator, and #crazyimaginations, leading us to suspicion that these images were artificially generated.
To confirm our doubt, we ran the viral image through the Hive AI Classifier tool, which is designed to detect AI-generated images. The results showed that the viral image was highly likely (100%) to be AI-generated.
We further found that Boomlive reached out to the Instagram user @lb_tengkorak, also known as Liena Bunkerz. When asked if the images were AI-generated, Bunkerz confirmed, “Yes, I generated these images using the AI-powered tool, Bing Image Creator.”
To sum up, the viral photo claimed to show Palestinian children sleeping in harsh conditions is not real but an image generated using an AI tool.