A young man creates a meme and shares it via an instagram account @shahv4012. The AI-generated meme goes viral.
According to AFP, "The All Eyes on Rafah" has been shared by more than 44 million Instagram accounts since Monday after a deadly Israeli strike at a camp for displaced Palestinians in the Gazan city.
The image depicts densely packed rows of tents stretching endlessly across a desert landscape overshadowed by mountains, alluding to the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled there during Israel's military campaign against Hamas.
Among those to share the image includes personalities as diverse as Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai, Spanish Deputy Prime Minister Yolanda Díaz, soccer player Ousmane Dembélé, former Finnish prime minister Sanna Marin and actress Bella Hadid.
In India, Madhuri Dixit, an apparently a few others, posted the image on social media but were forced to delete following reproval from several Instagram users.
Israel has countered the "All eyes on Rafah" social media trends with, "Where Were Your Eyes on October 7?"
Meanwhile, India on Thursday expressed concern over the "heartbreaking loss of civilian lives in the displacement camp in Rafah."
“The heartbreaking loss of civilian lives in the displacement camp in Rafah is a matter of deep concern. We have consistently called for protection of the civilian population and respect for international humanitarian law in the ongoing conflict,” the external affairs ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said.
To sum up on the AI-generated meme, writing in El Pais, Javier Salas noted thus: "If we had been told a year ago that a viral image that would crystallize outrage against the killing of children in Gaza would be an artificial intelligence (AI)-generated meme, we would have thought it dystopian..."
"It doesn’t matter that we have been discussing for months whether or not deepfakes will be a major problem in the future: millions of people have found in a synthetic image the best way to express their indignation over what Benjamin Netanyahu is perpetrating against Palestinians. The artificial image does not deceive us (the meme is not disinformation per se), but it suits us: for what we want to express and, above all, for what we want to display about ourselves," Javier Salas observed.