Canada will recognise Palestinian state at UN, PM says
The U-N says unless aid access improves rapidly, widespread famine is inevitable.
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News.com.au
an hour ago
- News.com.au
Grok, is that Gaza? AI image checks mislocate news photographs
This image by AFP photojournalist Omar al-Qattaa shows a skeletal, underfed girl in Gaza, where Israel's blockade has fuelled fears of mass famine in the Palestinian territory. But when social media users asked Grok where it came from, X boss Elon Musk's artificial intelligence chatbot was certain that the photograph was taken in Yemen nearly seven years ago. The AI bot's untrue response was widely shared online and a left-wing pro-Palestinian French lawmaker, Aymeric Caron, was accused of peddling disinformation on the Israel-Hamas war for posting the photo. At a time when internet users are turning to AI to verify images more and more, the furore shows the risks of trusting tools like Grok, when the technology is far from error-free. Grok said the photo showed Amal Hussain, a seven-year-old Yemeni child, in October 2018. In fact the photo shows nine-year-old Mariam Dawwas in the arms of her mother Modallala in Gaza City on August 2, 2025. Before the war, sparked by Hamas's October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, Mariam weighed 25 kilograms, her mother told AFP. Today, she weighs only nine. The only nutrition she gets to help her condition is milk, Modallala told AFP--and even that's "not always available". Challenged on its incorrect response, Grok said: "I do not spread fake news; I base my answers on verified sources." The chatbot eventually issued a response that recognised the error -- but in reply to further queries the next day, Grok repeated its claim that the photo was from Yemen. The chatbot has previously issued content that praised Nazi leader Adolf Hitler and that suggested people with Jewish surnames were more likely to spread online hate. - Radical right bias - Grok's mistakes illustrate the limits of AI tools, whose functions are as impenetrable as "black boxes", said Louis de Diesbach, a researcher in technological ethics. "We don't know exactly why they give this or that reply, nor how they prioritise their sources," said Diesbach, author of a book on AI tools, "Hello ChatGPT". Each AI has biases linked to the information it was trained on and the instructions of its creators, he said. In the researcher's view Grok, made by Musk's xAI start-up, shows "highly pronounced biases which are highly aligned with the ideology" of the South African billionaire, a former confidante of US President Donald Trump and a standard-bearer for the radical right. Asking a chatbot to pinpoint a photo's origin takes it out of its proper role, said Diesbach. "Typically, when you look for the origin of an image, it might say: 'This photo could have been taken in Yemen, could have been taken in Gaza, could have been taken in pretty much any country where there is famine'." AI does not necessarily seek accuracy -- "that's not the goal," the expert said. Another AFP photograph of a starving Gazan child by al-Qattaa, taken in July 2025, had already been wrongly located and dated by Grok to Yemen, 2016. That error led to internet users accusing the French newspaper Liberation, which had published the photo, of manipulation. - 'Friendly pathological liar' - An AI's bias is linked to the data it is fed and what happens during fine-tuning -- the so-called alignment phase -- which then determines what the model would rate as a good or bad answer. "Just because you explain to it that the answer's wrong doesn't mean it will then give a different one," Diesbach said. "Its training data has not changed and neither has its alignment." Grok is not alone in wrongly identifying images. When AFP asked Mistral AI's Le Chat -- which is in part trained on AFP's articles under an agreement between the French start-up and the news agency -- the bot also misidentified the photo of Mariam Dawwas as being from Yemen. For Diesbach, chatbots must never be used as tools to verify facts. "They are not made to tell the truth," but to "generate content, whether true or false", he said.
The Age
2 hours ago
- The Age
Bridge protest misread creates new caucus problem for premier
Chris Minns read his MPs the riot act early last year. If his Labor colleagues had a passion for international relations, the premier warned them via an ABC interview, they should head down the Hume Highway and become an MP in Canberra. Minns was referencing MPs speaking out about the bitterly divisive issue of Palestine and Israel, the catalyst for some of the most fiery debates on the floor of NSW Labor Party conferences over decades. In this instance, two of Minns' MPs had signed a letter to Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong, criticising the decision to suspend payments to the main UN agency in Gaza after Israel provided intelligence that it said linked some employees to the October 7, 2023 attacks. 'I can understand people feel passionately about international affairs,' Minns told ABC's Stateline, 'but honestly, if that's your passion, and that's where your desires are, your policy interests are, well, run for federal parliament.' Some 18 months on, Minns had better hope they do not follow his directions because 10 of them – or just shy of 20 per cent of his Labor caucus – revealed their passion/desires/interests when they took part in the pro-Palestine march across Sydney Harbour Bridge on Sunday. The most senior of those MPs, among at least 90,000 protesters, was the government's leader of the upper house and Environment Minister Penny Sharpe. Her attendance sent a clear message that the Left of the party can, despite Minns' instructions, walk and chew gum at the same time. Loading Also on the bridge were former Labor general secretary turned upper house MP Bob Nanva, Emergency Services Minister Jihad Dib and backbenchers Stephen Lawrence, Sarah Kaine, Anthony D'Adam, Lynda Voltz, Cameron Murphy, Kylie Wilkinson and Peter Primrose. Former Labor premier and long-term Palestine supporter Bob Carr joined them. Dib, a Muslim with family ties to Palestine, was understandably motivated to be on the bridge. The others had their own motivation – and they sent a clear message to Minns that being an elected official in NSW does not preclude you from having a position on a humanitarian crisis. It also shows that the caucus Minns has ruled with an iron fist since his election as leader is willing to think for itself. The first caucus meeting after the march, on Tuesday, was heated. MPs were angry. Before he was overruled by the Supreme Court and the protest given the greenlight, Minns said he would not tolerate shutting down the 'central artery' of Sydney, despite there being a history of that happening. (In 2007, the Harbour Bridge was closed for a full day to give US Vice-President Dick Cheney a clear ride through the city.) As is his skill, Minns played to both sides, stressing he had empathy for the plight of civilians in Gaza.
Sydney Morning Herald
2 hours ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
Bridge protest misread creates new caucus problem for premier
Chris Minns read his MPs the riot act early last year. If his Labor colleagues had a passion for international relations, the premier warned them via an ABC interview, they should head down the Hume Highway and become an MP in Canberra. Minns was referencing MPs speaking out about the bitterly divisive issue of Palestine and Israel, the catalyst for some of the most fiery debates on the floor of NSW Labor Party conferences over decades. In this instance, two of Minns' MPs had signed a letter to Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong, criticising the decision to suspend payments to the main UN agency in Gaza after Israel provided intelligence that it said linked some employees to the October 7, 2023 attacks. 'I can understand people feel passionately about international affairs,' Minns told ABC's Stateline, 'but honestly, if that's your passion, and that's where your desires are, your policy interests are, well, run for federal parliament.' Some 18 months on, Minns had better hope they do not follow his directions because 10 of them – or just shy of 20 per cent of his Labor caucus – revealed their passion/desires/interests when they took part in the pro-Palestine march across Sydney Harbour Bridge on Sunday. The most senior of those MPs, among at least 90,000 protesters, was the government's leader of the upper house and Environment Minister Penny Sharpe. Her attendance sent a clear message that the Left of the party can, despite Minns' instructions, walk and chew gum at the same time. Loading Also on the bridge were former Labor general secretary turned upper house MP Bob Nanva, Emergency Services Minister Jihad Dib and backbenchers Stephen Lawrence, Sarah Kaine, Anthony D'Adam, Lynda Voltz, Cameron Murphy, Kylie Wilkinson and Peter Primrose. Former Labor premier and long-term Palestine supporter Bob Carr joined them. Dib, a Muslim with family ties to Palestine, was understandably motivated to be on the bridge. The others had their own motivation – and they sent a clear message to Minns that being an elected official in NSW does not preclude you from having a position on a humanitarian crisis. It also shows that the caucus Minns has ruled with an iron fist since his election as leader is willing to think for itself. The first caucus meeting after the march, on Tuesday, was heated. MPs were angry. Before he was overruled by the Supreme Court and the protest given the greenlight, Minns said he would not tolerate shutting down the 'central artery' of Sydney, despite there being a history of that happening. (In 2007, the Harbour Bridge was closed for a full day to give US Vice-President Dick Cheney a clear ride through the city.) As is his skill, Minns played to both sides, stressing he had empathy for the plight of civilians in Gaza.
