The fog of war now has a new, technological dimension

It was probably to be expected, but that ol' AI has already played an outsized role in the Israel-Hamas conflict.

Artificial intelligence is starting to affect the news we see and read to a substantial extent, and sometimes in rather unexpected ways. AI-generated images and deep-faked videos are doing the rounds of social media sites. Some are more obvious than others, but many are even slipping though the net of available detection tools.

Even more hard to manage, there are plenty of pictures and video footage out there that is actually authentic (verified by major networks or internet companies or initiatives like the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity and other AI specialists and disinformation researchers), but that is being questioned by political activists and factions for their own purposes, to deliberately muddy the waters or to bolster their own propaganda efforts. 

The mere possibility that AI fakes are circulating is enough to cause people to dismiss genuine images and video, to poison the well, so to speak. This is particularly the case on the less reliable platforms like X (Twitter), Truth Social, Telegram and Reddit, where several political figures and media outlets have been accused of using AI-created content to manipulate public opinion, even when they actually haven't. 

It's an easy way to score cheap political points, and we are almost at the stage where such claims are unfalsifiable. A study by the New York Times showed that deepfake detection tools are at best spotty, with some real photos being identified as inauthentic, and some obvious AI creations labelled as authentic.

The Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (a rather awkward moniker) and Google believe the only way forward is the identification of the source and history of media files, although even watermarks can be faked or removed nowadays. 

And you know it's just going to get worse. What a world we live in!