Artificial Intelligence Depictions of Conflict: Israel-Palestine : A Visual Propaganda Analysis of AI-Generated Images in the Israel-Palestine Conflict

Artificial intelligence (AI) has increased in modern warfare, especially on social media. One conflict where the usage of AI has drawn attention is the Israel-Palestine conflict, especially following the October 7th 2023 attacks, and the viral AI-generated image “All Eyes on Rafah”. Previous research concludes that propaganda and disinformation is prevalent in information wars, and in usage of AI-generated content which can polarize already vulnerable societies. However, there is limited research analyzing AI-generated images depicting the Israel-Palestine conflict to determine whether themes of social division and visual propaganda themes are prevalent. Therefore, this research uses criterion sampling as a methodological framework to purposefully select images on the Adobe Stock website to analyze ingroup-outgroup relations and Tom Bryder’s (2008) model of successful visual propaganda. The research concludes that 1) AI-generated images depict more of the ingroup, by displaying themes of patriotism and ingroup unity, rather than focusing on the outgroup; 2) Bryder’s (2008) visual propaganda model is applicable in most of the depiction of the images, such as emotional and fear appeals as AI-generated images depict children, national symbols and religious landmarks, while research highlights how AI-generated content hurts the epistemological trust of the audience; 3) the main argument of Bryder (2008), that the message of the propagandist has to become a life of its own, is somewhat true in the case of AI-generated images as “text-to-image” generators and the spread of AI-generated images on social media has in a way become a life of its own. The study concludes that AI-generated images are powerful as it reinforces already existing narratives, and has the ability to depict conflict imagery.