The Israeli military has released a video purportedly showing alleged Hamas fighters arrested at the Jabalia refugee camp In the video, one man is seen walking towards a soldier and handing over a rifle, in his left hand, and a hand gun to his right. But it appears that the clip was staged, with a slightly different second version also appearing online, raising questions about the video’s authenticity.
It also emerged that the person in the video is a well-known man in Gaza, who owns an aluminum workshop, and who was allegedly kidnapped in a different town in northern Gaza.
Samuel Wooley, an expert on propaganda and tech manipulations at the University of Texas at Austin, said there is nothing new about the use of videos to “manipulate public opinion” in warfare. “Images can be falsified and faked in many ways. And that includes the use of Artificial Intelligence, that includes the use of computational tools,” he said, without commenting directly on the specific Israeli video.
“We are seeing the massive rise of the quality of manipulated videos, making it possible to produce videos that are much more sophisticated and believable than ever before.”
