The cemetery of Minab, photographed as it prepares to bury more than 100 of the town’s young girls, is one of the defining images of the US-Israeli war on Iran, bluntly capturing the devastating civilian toll.
But is it real?
Ask Gemini, the AI service powered by Google, and the answer you receive is no – in fact, Gemini claims the photograph is from two years earlier and more than 2,000km (1,240 miles) away. Rather than graves for small girls killed by a missile, the image “depicts a mass burial site in Kahramanmaraş, Turkey” after the 7.8 magnitude earthquake that struck in 2023. “This specific aerial perspective became one of the most widely shared images of the disaster,” Gemini says, “illustrating the sheer scale of the loss.”
The cemetery image, it turns out, is authentic. Researchers have cross referenced the photo of the site with satellite images that confirm its location, and it can be cross-referenced again with dozens more images taken of the same site from slightly different angles, and again with video footage – none of which experts say show signs of tampering or digital manipulation. The “factchecks” by Gemini and Grok are just one example of a tidal wave of AI-generated slop – hallucinated facts, nonsense analysis and faked images – that are engulfing coverage of the Iran war. Experts say it is wasting investigative time and risks atrocities being denied – as well as heralding alarming weaknesses as people increasingly rely on AI summaries for news and information.
While growing up I used tech to make myself more intelligent, I wanted to understand how it worked and functioned. Least on a software level I’m a programmer not hardware (though may do some small projects to see at some point).
I always wonder why we fell so far, like from growing up I needed to figure out computers and ensure I could use them to their fullest. These days appears most people of a similar age don’t care cause it works.
While I see that point. it hasn’t worked that long and at this point we seem to have people not knowing where to save a word document. That’s from 3rd party stories but seems believable. So we went from some of the most curious people understanding their tools to people going ‘meh it works’ without understanding a damn thing.
It only worked decently cause the operators understood it and we put in our time. Shit did I just get a reason for Matrix operators name? Like a dual meaning besides the phone one. Huh never thought of that but back in the day operators had some answer usually…