Is this image of flooded tents in Gaza real?

As winter flooding hit Gaza — where roughly 65% of the population, about 1.4 million people, lives in tents or makeshift shelters, according to the United Nations — a striking image circulated online in early November purportedly showing the magnitude of the flooding’s damage.

Apparently shot at night, the image showed blue and white tents flooded by murky water, several buildings standing in the background as light from windows and streetlights appeared to reflect across the surface of the water.

Posts of the image shared across social media collectively gained millions of views and reactions, with hundreds of commenters appearing to believe the image was authentic. Prominent accounts, including British Parliament member Jeremy Corbyn, posted the image before deleting it (archived).

Although intense rainfall in Gaza early November has caused flooding and put thousands of people in danger as Israel continues to blockade crucial supplies — including 150,000 tents waiting just outside, according to the U.N. — this image was a fake. 

The image contained multiple signs of being generated with artificial intelligrnace, including an OpenAI watermark that OpenAI’s verification software identified. It’s unclear precisely where it originated.

(OpenAI)

OpenAI reconstructs its images in a systemic grid pattern (autoregressive approach). Upon zooming in more closely, the pixel pattern of the image showed signs of a star-like grid, which digital forensics expert Hany Farid has described as a tell-tale sign of AI-generation. 

(X user @ahmed_nashwan1 and Heny Farid, Snopes illustration)

The image displays other signs of AI generation, including unnatural light interruption, a mottled sky texture, and harsh lines between blurred pixels and textured pixels. 

(X user ahmed_nashwan1, Snopes illustration)

Despite the fact that this image was AI-generated, there are hundreds of publicly available images showing the extent of the flooding destruction in Gaza.

Sources