Fact-Check: AI-Generated Image Peddled as Camps Built for Displaced Israelis

While there are tent camps for people displaced by the war, this photo does not show a camp in Eilat, Israel.

An image showing several blue and white tents set up along a beach, with some bearing the Star of David, has gone viral on social media.

What are users saying?: The image is being shared to claim that it shows a tent camp in Israel’s Eilat, set up by Israel’s government to provide shelter for displaced citizens.

(Archives of more claims on social media can be seen here and here.) 

Is it true?: No, the image has been created using AI tools.

• While there are tent camps which have been set up for people displaced by the conflict, this image does not show one such camp.

How did we find out?: We ran a reverse image search on the viral photo, and found that it had not been shared by any credible source.

• Next, we looked for reports on tent camps for people displaced as a result of the Israel-Hamas conflict. This led us to a photo story by AP, which showed many photographs of tents set up bt the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) for displaced Palestinians. 

• None of these tents bore symbols related to any country or faith, and were beige or white in colour.

(Note: Swipe to view images.)

Is the photo real?: On carefully observing the photo, we noticed some inconsistencies.

• Firstly, the flag in the upper-right part of the image, carries two poorly drawn Stars of David, and not one, like the Israeli flag.

• Next, we saw that despite the weather being sunny and warm in Israel, especially in Eilat, where some claims suggest that this photo was taken, most people appear to be wearing thick, winter clothes. 

• Additionally, the overall image looks oddly smooth, unlike regular photographs.

• While Eilat has a similar coastline, satellite images on Google Earth show densely packed buildings and hills in the far-distance, unlike the image in the claim, which shows an empty landscape.

• We ran the image through AI-generated image detection tools, such as Optic’s AI or Not and Huggingface, both of which told us that the image was likely generated by AI.

(Note: Swipe to view images.)

• Using Stable Diffusion’s web version, we attempted to generate images like the claim. One can see that several similar photographs were created using prompts given to the AI tool.

Conclusion: This photo does not show a tent camp set up by the Israeli government in Eilat, for Israeli's displaced by the war.

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