Thank you, BB. You beat me to it. Doesn't seem to matter how many posts we get encouraging/chastising people to do higher quality research. Very frustrating.
So, like all of us, I started seeing this image floating around everywhere within the past 12 hours or so. And I did a bit of digging.
-The image does pass the AI detection tests I've done, though as some people have called out, the IDF logo does look slightly too blurry relative to the image quality.
-I'd ask people to take this with a pinch of salt because it's somewhat anecdotal. But I spent a fair amount of time doing reverse image search research on this image. I have done a lot of this over the years for myriad images, often UFO related to determine authenticity and original origin.
This is the first time that I can recall that google reverse image search could not provide a "find original source image" option for me. After some interrogation of Gemini, I finally received this:
"While I cannot independently verify the exact social media account where this image first appeared, investigative reports from sources like TIME and SFGATE indicate that it surfaced on platforms like X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram immediately following the shooting incident."
So basically: "I can't verify the origin of an image from a public social media account, but corporate media says it's the real deal!"
Further interrogation resulted in more tripe "Well, he might have posted it but then immediately took it down and google never had time to scrape it", etc etc.
Peeps, please take Bubble_Bursts thoughts here to heart. Narratives become facts in our heads all too quickly. What we often think we "know", we don't actually know at all.
And again, while my experience here is anecdotal, i'm no stranger to searching for the origins of images. I can't ever recall getting the run around from google like I did for this image.
Thank you, BB. You beat me to it. Doesn't seem to matter how many posts we get encouraging/chastising people to do higher quality research. Very frustrating.
So, like all of us, I started seeing this image floating around everywhere within the past 12 hours or so. And I did a bit of digging.
-The image does pass the AI detection tests I've done, though as some people have called out, the IDF logo does look slightly too blurry relative to the image quality.
-I'd ask people to take this with a pinch of salt because it's somewhat anecdotal. But I spent a fair amount of time doing reverse image search research on this image. I have done a lot of this over the years for myriad images, often UFO related to determine authenticity and original origin.
This is the first time that I can recall that google reverse image search could not provide a "find original source image" option for me. After some interrogation of Gemini, I finally received this:
"While I cannot independently verify the exact social media account where this image first appeared, investigative reports from sources like TIME and SFGATE indicate that it surfaced on platforms like X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram immediately following the shooting incident."
So basically: "I can't verify the origin of an image from a public social media account, but corporate media says it's the real deal!"
Further interrogation resulted in more tripe "Well, he might have posted it but then immediately took it down and google never had time to scrape it", etc etc.
Peeps, please take Bubble_Bursts thoughts here to heart. Narratives become facts in our heads all too quickly. What we often think we "know", we don't actually know at all.
And again, while my experience here is anecdotal, i'm no stranger to searching for the origins of images. I can't ever recall getting the run around from google like I did for this image.
Be really careful with this one.