No, this image doesn’t show a real tent city for displaced Israelis. It was created with AI

The war between Israel and Hamas militants has caused people to flee their homes and seek emergency shelter. 

According to the Times of Israel, more than 200,000 Israelis are internally displaced, which means they have been displaced from their home but have not crossed an internationally recognized border. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) says about 1.4 million are internally displaced in Gaza, with nearly 580,000 sheltering in emergency shelters.

One image shared online claims to show an encampment built for people displaced by war. This X post written in Arabic and translated via Google Translate, says the image shows the first camp built for those displaced. This post with the image, written in English, says “Israelis are living in tents!”

This post on DefenceHub, an online message board, claims the tent city seen in the image has been set up in the city of Eilat in Israel and already houses 60,000 Israelis. 

An account on messaging app Telegram that shares Hamas-related news says the photo shows a tent city in a Hamas-occupied territory of the Gaza Strip and was built for “displaced Zionists.”

THE QUESTION

Does this viral image show a real tent city for displaced Israelis?

THE SOURCES

• RevEye, a reverse image search engine
• Photos published by The Associated Press
• Photos published by Al Jazeera
• VERIFY analysis of the image

THE ANSWER

No, this viral image doesn’t show a real tent city for displaced Israelis. The image was created with AI.

WHAT WE FOUND

While there is currently a tent camp in the Gaza Strip and there are reports of plans to erect tent cities in multiple locations across Israel, this image doesn’t show a real tent city built for those displaced by war. 

Here’s what we know about the actual tent camps:

According to the Associated Press, hundreds of Palestinians have crowded into a tent camp in Khan Younis, located in southern Gaza. 972 Magazine, which covers Israel and Palestine, reported more than 100 United Nations tents appeared in the town’s city square to provide housing for at least 800 people.

The Times of Israel reported a tent city is being built in the Tel Aviv district of Ramat Gan to house “tens of thousands.” The mayor of Eilat, a city in southern Israel about 130 miles from the Gaza Strip, told the Times he is considering building tent cities to house displaced evacuees.

But the image that has been shared in recent days doesn’t show an actual tent city encampment in Gaza or in Israel. It’s created with generative artificial intelligence (AI). Generative AI refers to a type of AI technology that can generate or create new content, including fake images.

There are several steps VERIFY took in order to confirm the image is AI – we conducted a reverse image search, looked at real images from reputable sources and also analyzed the image itself.

For this particular image, we first did a reverse image search using RevEye. This photo doesn’t appear to have been published by any reputable news sources covering the war. 

That is the first red flag.

From there, we looked at the image itself. VERIFY has talked to several sources about so-called artifacts that can help someone detect if an image is AI. For example, AI creation tools have difficulty with minor details, like creating bodies or providing consistent shading and texture.

Several of the people in this image are misshapen. For example, at least two of them have different sized legs, or the width of their arm isn’t to scale with the size of their legs and torso. 

The flag in the top left corner of the image is also supposed to be the national flag of the state of Israel. But, this flag has two Star of David symbols that are misshapen; the actual flag of Israel only has one Star of David in the center of the flag.

The people in the background of the image appear oblong, and the shadowing is inconsistent across the image. For example, some tents or people have shadows and others don’t, or the shadows aren’t consistent with the size of the seemingly original object. 

The texture of the sand and the outside of the fake tents also appear too smooth. 

After looking at the artifacts within the image, VERIFY looked at photos from the existing tent encampment in Khan Younis that were published by two agencies – The Associated Press (AP) and Al Jazeera. 

In the viral image claiming to show the encampment, the tents are of a high quality with zippers and windows. Those tents are also mostly blue and white, or have bold colors and one has the Star of David on the side. That is inconsistent with the photos published by AP and Al Jazeera.

In AP and Al Jazeera’s photos taken from a tent camp in Khan Younis, a city in the southern Gaza Strip, the tents are beige and shaped like an A-frame, with one pole holding the highest point of the tent. Those tents also either bear no markings on the side or bear the symbol of the Kuwait Red Crescent Society, a humanitarian organization that partners with the UN to provide aid.

VERIFY also looked at screenshots shared by the Times of Israel that show the tent city being erected in the Israeli city of Ramat Gan. Those tents also have a high point in the center and are all white, unlike the tents that appear in the fake image.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.