Viral ‘All Eyes on Rafah’ Post Prompts More AI Images of the War in Gaza

Days after the AI-generated image calling for “all eyes on Rafah” went viral on Instagram, dozens more posts that seem to have been created using artificial intelligence have been shared across the social media platform.

The images circulating online are a mix of pro-Israel and pro-Palestine posts, NBC News reported. Some of them imitate the original “all eyes on Rafah” image, while others are more graphic, such as one that depicts Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu covered in blood.

One post is an image of a large crowd with the words “bring them home now,” referencing the Israeli hostages in Gaza.

This wave of AI-generated images comes after the “all eyes on Rafah” post has been shared more than 47 million times by Instagram users, including celebrities like Bella Hadid and Nicola Coughlan. The image began circulating on the social media platform after public outrage over an Israeli airstrike in Rafah that killed at least 45 Palestinians. Rafah, which sits on the southern Gaza Strip near the Egyptian border, had been designated a humanitarian zone for civilians.

Some people criticized using AI for the “all eyes on Rafah” image, saying that it sanitized the devastation in Gaza. Others said that, because of social media algorithmic guidelines that restrict graphic content, it may have been difficult for activists to share images related to the war, so AI-generated images was a way around that.

Many pro-Israel images started being shared on social media after the “all eyes on Rafah” image went viral, according to NBC News. As is common among AI-generated content, these posts often have repeated or blurred visual features. Some people who posted the images admitted to using AI to make them.

Some Israeli media outlets reported Wednesday that a pro-Israel Instagram post that was created in response to the “all eyes on Rafah” image was taken down from Instagram. In the AI-generated image, a Hamas gunman stood over a baby in a puddle of blood and an Israeli flag on fire, with text that said, “Where were your eyes on October 7?” The Times of Israel reported that the post had been reinstated on the social media platform, and Meta said that the image did not violate its guidelines and was removed by accident.

Meta had previously said that it would aim to mark content created by artificial intelligence on its platforms, but none of the posts analyzed by NBC News had labels to indicate that they were AI-generated.