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. Later, 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 photo claiming to be a scene from the naval convoy has recently been circulated in reports related to the Sumud Flotilla by several domestic media outlets.
See such reports published in the media: Ittefaq, Daily Sun, The Daily Star, Kalbela, Jugantor, Bangladesh Pratidin, Kholakagoj, Amar Desh, Manobkantha, Samoyer Kanthaswar, The Business Standard, Manabzamin, Dhaka Mail, Janakantha, BD24Report, DBC News, Ekattor TV, Desh TV, Channel 24, Jamuna TV, Ekushey TV, Ekhon TV, SA TV, ATN News, ATN Bangla, Channel One, Dhaka Journal, Daily Sangram, Sangbad Prokash, Ekusher Sangbad, Dainik Azadi, Sharenews24, News71, Dainik Saradesh, Delta Times, and BD Today.
See posts on media Facebook pages here.
See a video on a media YouTube channel here.
See a post on TikTok here (Archive).
Fact-check
The Rumor Scanner team’s investigation found that the circulated photo claiming to show the Sumud Flotilla is not real. In reality, the photo in question was created with the help of artificial intelligence or AI technology and was circulated in the media without any warning.
A reverse image search for the photo led to an Instagram post related to the Sumud Flotilla from September 3 on an account with the username cybertechweb.
A review of the post shows that the image used in it matches the photo circulated by domestic media claiming to be of the Sumud Flotilla. However, upon close inspection of the photo, a watermark of Google’s Gemini AI can also be seen in its bottom right corner.
An investigation on this matter revealed that on August 26, Google DeepMind unveiled an advanced image editing model called ‘Nano Banana’, which is currently accessible through Google’s AI assistant, Gemini. This model allows users to edit images in an advanced and creative manner.
Subsequently, to confirm whether the photo 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.
This confirms that the photo in question was created using Google’s AI assistant, Gemini.
It should be noted here that domestic media outlets used this photo as a feature image and as a thumbnail on YouTube and Facebook in their reports without any AI warning or source credit. Therefore, those reports have also been considered as the claim in this fact-check report.
Therefore, an AI-generated image is being circulated in the media with the claim that it is a photo of the Sumud Flotilla fleet; which is completely false.
Sources
- Cybertechweb Instagram Post
- Deepfake-O-Meter
- Rumor Scanner’s Analysis
