In October 2024, a picture of the aircraft setting to land at the Beirut airport against the background of the flames from the explosion spread in the score. We checked whether this photo is genuine.
A photograph of the aircraft began to spread on social networks on October 21. The authors of the posts claimed that the picture was taken late on Sunday evening (that is, October 20) and it was captured by the passenger liner of the Lebanese airline Mea, which is sitting at Beyirut International Airport right during Israeli air strikes. The image appeared in the Telegram channel of the TV presenter Sergey Mardan (74,000 at the time of writing this analysis), as well as "Uncle Glory"(178 000),"Voblya • News"(135 000),"Notepad Russia 18+"(123,000),"Sheikh Tamir"(120 000) and"Freshness"(104 000). The TV presenter also shared the picture Vladimir Solovyov (185,000 views), but subsequently he updated the post, clarifying: "This is graphics or neural network."
On Sunday, October 20, Israel really applied Several blows to Beirut. One of them fell on an object located near the local airport. According to the representative of the Israeli defense army, the attack was aimed to branches associated with Hezbollah, the financial organization al-card al-Hasan.
AFP correspondent working in Beirut, reportedthat at the time of the attack, the airport continued to accept passenger flights (this is also confirmed by service data Flightradar24), however, the personnel shot by the news agency that evening are not at all like a viral picture.
The factor of the Misbar project also Turned Attention to the fact that the livery of the aircraft in the photo does not correspond to the one that is applied to the aircraft of the MEA airline.
Among the examples of publications containing a viral picture and found by the Google back search by images, “verified” revealed two of the earliest. They appeared on Instagram with a difference of 6 minutes. - In the profile Eyes of Lebanon October 21 at 00:36 Moscow time and immediately in Four accounts (Palestine Pixel, Eye on Palestine 2, South Lebanon and on the blog of designer Khussein Almadi) at 00:42. In both posts it is directly written that the image is generated by artificial intelligence (AI) and is designed to explain the situation in Beirut. The fact of the agency DPA Contacted the owner of the Eyes of Lebanon account - he confirmed that the picture was created with the help of AI, but clarified that he was not its author. “Verified” also applied for a commentary to Almadi, but at the time of publication, she did not receive a response.
Services that determine the content that is generated using AI with a high degree of confidence confirm the statement of Eyes of Lebanon. In particular, Sightengine appreciated the likelihood that the image was created by neuralities, 84%, Trumedia - in 91%, and HIVE - in 96.1%.
Thus, in a viral photograph, a plane plant in Beirut was not shown during Israeli shelling. Most likely, the picture was created with the help of AI, which was directly said by the authors of the first publications with this image.
Photo on the cover: Viral posts in Telegram
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