In protest of Israel’s ongoing illegal blockade of Gaza, the Global Sumud Flotilla, a naval initiative by international human rights activists to deliver aid, began its journey from Barcelona, Spain, on August 31. Subsequently, between September 13 and 15, more vessels carrying aid joined the fleet from Tunisia, the Italian island of Sicily, and the Greek island of Syros. In this context, a video has recently been circulated on the social media platform Facebook, claiming to be footage of the said naval convoy.

See such a Facebook post shared by S M Akash, Chief News Editor of Deepto Television, here (Archive).

See other posts circulated on Facebook here (Archive), here (Archive), and here (Archive).

See such videos circulated on Instagram here (Archive) and here (Archive).

Fact-check

The Rumor Scanner team’s investigation found that the circulated video claiming to be of the Sumud Flotilla is not real. In fact, the video in question was created with the help of artificial intelligence or AI technology.

An investigation into the video did not find any such footage of the Global Sumud Flotilla in any reliable sources. Additionally, a close review of the video reveals some AI-related inconsistencies. The video shows an unusually large number of passengers on the ships. Also, the ships are seen moving in an unnaturally ordered formation, neither of which is consistent with a real naval convoy. See some videos of the Global Sumud Flotilla here, here, and here. The video also exhibits a blurriness characteristic of AI-generated videos.

Subsequently, to confirm whether the video in question was created with the help of artificial intelligence, it was tested on the AI content detection platform Deepfake-O-Meter. The test showed a 99.75 percent probability that it was created with AI.