Conservationist's underwater sculpture in Thailand falsely shared as 'centuries-old'
The images show divers examining human faces that appear to have been carved into a sculpture on the sea floor.
"Archaeologists suggest these carvings might be centuries-old, and are possibly associated with an ancient civilisation's rituals or offerings to the sea," the caption goes on to say.
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Screenshot of the false Facebook post, captured on March 12, 2025
The collage was also shared alongside the same Malay-language claim elsewhere on Facebook, as well as in similar posts from users listed as based in Indonesia, the United States and the Philippines.
The underwater sculpture, however, is not centuries-old or indicative of an ancient civilisation, as the posts claim.
A reverse image search on Google followed by a keyword search found similar photos in a blog article written by Spencer Arnold, who describes himself as a reef conservation instructor and sculptor (archived link).
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Screenshot comparison of the collage circulating in the false posts (left) and similar images published in Arnold's blog (right)
Arnold's blog, published on May 20, 2015, says the sculpture is his first and took him four months to construct before it was placed "5m under the ocean's surface".
"Now all it needs to be complete is time. As corals to encrust over it, it will become incorporated into the natural reef and each of the concrete faces will slowly become obscured and forgotten," reads the blog.
"The sculpture is meant to call attention to our planet's dying reef ecosystems," reads an article about the sculpture on his website, which includes photos of the sculpture and Arnold's other works (archived link).
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AFP
a day ago
- AFP
AI images of Holocaust violin players circulate online
"Henek, a violinist, was forced into the camp orchestra. His role: to play music as fellow prisoners were led to the gas chambers. He played 'Schubert's Serenade' with tears streaming down his face, bow trembling in his hand," a July 4, 2025 post on Facebook says. "One girl turned and whispered, 'Your music is the last thing I'll hear. Thank you.'" The post shows an image of a gaunt man playing the violin with emaciated figures standing behind him. "Henek survived the war. He never touched a violin again," the post, which generated more than 12,000 likes and 5,000 shares, claims. Image Screenshot of a post on Facebook taken July 31, 2025, with red cross added by AFP The image was shared across numerous other accounts on Facebook, as well as on X, Instagram, Threads and YouTube. ad in multiple languages including Greek, French and Bulgarian. arches reveal that "Henek" is just one of many fake characters featured in fabricated narratives about violin players including "Eliska Varga," "Miriam Grünbaum," "Eliezer," "Jakob," "Eli Grunfeld," "Leon," "David Morgenstern" and multiple images of men apparently nam." Image Screenshots of multiple posts on Facebook taken July 31, 2025, with red cross added by AFP The images follow an alarming trend of content creators churning out AI-generated content for money, targeting Westerners' emotional reactions to the Holocaust, in which six million Jewish people were killed (archived here). The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum repeatedly condemned the content (archived here) -- also lodging complaints with Facebook owner Meta over the posts. But it said the technology giant did not respond. Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) warned of the dangers of false Holocaust content in a 2024 report, which said AI-generated posts can warp historical narratives and fuel anti-Semitism (archived here). While music was an integral part of everyday life in almost all the Nazi-run camps, with prisoners being forced to either sing or play instruments (archived here), both the image and the story shared on social media are fabricated. Visual inconsistencies ntified several visual inconsistencies in the image of "Henek." The violinist seems to have square-like knuckles that are disproportionate in size. One figure in the background only has three fingers. Image The image shared on social media, with visual inconsistencies highlighted by AFP The fourth string of the violin also disappears at the bottom part of the instrument. Image The image shared on social media, with visual inconsistencies highlighted and magnified by AFP His appearance is also inconsistent with the other figures in the "Henek" has a head full of hair while those in the background have their heads shaved. A shirt clings to the violinist's torso while the majority of the prisoners are shirtless and wearing pants with a belt. Both modes of dressing, however, differ from the blue and and jacket required in the Nazi-run camps (archived here). Sybille Steinbacher, professor of contemporary history at the University of Vienna (archived here), said her doubts about the authenticity of the image were reinforced by the shirtless men depicted. s had to be clothed; there was no such thing as standing for roll call with a naked upper body," she said on July 23 to AFP. Pawel Sawicki, deputy spokesperson for the Auschwitz Memorial (archived here), said in a July 24 email that prisoners "did not have belts and camp numbers were also sewn onto their trousers." pointed out that in 1943 prisoners would have had tattoos with their numbers on their arms. Image The image shared on social media, with visual inconsistencies highlighted by AFP AFP also analyzed a video posted on Facebook, which pointed to further visual inconsistencies. The InVID Verification Plugin magnifier tool reveals frames in the clip where the faces in the background appear The person to the left of the musician also looks as if he has no sternum or stomach, with ribs showing down to his belt. Image Screenshot of a keyframe with results from the InVID verification tool taken July 21, 2025, with visual inconsistencies highlighted by AFP Historical inaccuracies Researchers other historical inaccuracies pertaining to the story of "Henek." On July 6, the Auschwitz Memorial account posted a screenshot of a false post on X, saying: "Publishing fake, AI-generated images of Auschwitz is not only a dangerous distortion. Such fabrication disrespects victims and harasses their memory" (archived here). In a comment below the post, it pointed to inaccurate details in the story, including that it was improbable for a girl to have walked past a male violinist as the "men's orchestra played in the men's camp." Publishing fake, AI-generated images of Auschwitz is not only a dangerous distortion. Such fabrication disrespects victims and harasses their memory. If you see such posts, please don't share them. Instead, follow the official @AuschwitzMuseum, where every name, every photo, and… — Auschwitz Memorial (@AuschwitzMuseum) July 6, 2025 Auschwitz-Birkenau museum historian Jacek Lachendro (archived here) said that some historical accounts mention the men's orchestra in Birkenau playing while newly arrived Jews were being led to the gas chambers or while "prisoners were being led to the place of their execution by hanging or shooting (but not during the execution itself)." However, he emphasized that the musicians did not play in these situations "as a Elise Petit, whose research focuses on music within the Nazi camp system, agreed, telling AFP on July 21 that musicians mainly "played close to the gate when prisoners were marching in and out of the camp to work," (archived here, here and here). The Auschwitz Memorial concurred with Petit's analysis, writing in a comment on the July 6 post that "Orchestras at Auschwitz did not play 'while men, women, and children were marched to their deaths'. Their main job was to play when columns of prisoners walked out to work and marched back to the camp." ed the Arolsen Archives -- a containing victims and survivors of the Nazi regime -- for the name "Henek" and individuals mentioned in other posts, using a filter for "Konzenstrationslager Auschwitz" under "Place of Incarceration." But the search results do not match the identity of "Henek" or others depicted in the images and stories shared online. AI Detectors AFP analyzed the image developed by cybersecurity company GetReal Lab, which the image was synthetic. Image Screenshot taken July 18, 2025 showing the results of synthetic content analysis done using GetReal Lab AFP through the Hive Moderation AI detection tool, which found that the image is highly likely to contain AI-generated or deepfake content, with a 99.9 percent confidence level. Image Screenshot taken July 21, 2025 showing the results of analysis using Hive Moderation first concentration camps, established in 1933 shortly after Adolf Hitler became chancellor, were primarily used to imprison opponents of Nazi policy. By the end of 1942, six extermination camps were in operation, including Auschwitz-Birkenau, following the Wannsee conference that formalized the Nazis' policy of extermination of Jews in occupied Europe. Around 1.1 million people were systemically murdered in Auschw it the largest death camp. Approximately one million of those killed at Auschwitz were Jews, with Roma, Russian prisoners of war and Poles among the rest murdered. AFP fact-checked other claims related to AI here.
AFP
4 days ago
- AFP
Altered photo of Hulk Hogan surges following wrestler's death
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France 24
17-07-2025
- France 24
How influencers are getting clicks by sharing AI-generated, fake images of the Holocaust
Social media users have been circulating an image since early July that they say is a photo of a prisoner in the Auschwitz concentration camp, where a million Jewish people were exterminated during World War II. The photo is said to show a man named Henek, a violinist who was forced to play in the camp's orchestra. "His role: to play music as fellow prisoners were led to the gas chambers,' reads one caption by a Facebook user. A video featuring the image of Henek was also widely shared on Facebook. A photo and video that were generated by AI However, as the team working at Poland's Auschwitz Memorial wrote on X on July 6, the photo is false – it was AI-generated. The museum calls the post a 'dangerous distortion' and adds that 'such fabrication disrespects victims and harasses their memory'. There are anomalies in both the photos and the video that are common in AI-generated images. If you increase the luminosity of the image to better see the details, one of the prisoners seems to be missing eyeballs. In the video, the hands of another prisoner appeared to be fused together. A story that is fake 'from A to Z' Aside from the visual anomalies, the photo and video, which are supposed to document the story of a violinist who played for prisoners sent to gas chambers, aren't credible from a historical point of view. "This story is fake from A to Z and for a very simple reason: people sent to the gas chambers were not serenaded by an orchestra,' Tal Bruttmann, a historian specialising in the history of Auschwitz, told the FRANCE 24 Observers team. 'The camp orchestras were generally playing march music when columns of prisoners were marching to work and returning to the camp,' the Auschwitz Memorial told our team. 'They were not playing for Jews who were murdered in gas chambers immediately after arrival selection.' The scene depicted in the photo also doesn't make sense, Bruttmann said. "To see a guy with a violin standing in the middle of a group of prisoners is ridiculous,' he told us. 'If you look at photos of the Auschwitz orchestra, you can see how they were [truly] organised.' Drawings of the Auschwitz orchestra made by camp prisoners show that the musicians were always in a group, under the supervision of guards. As camp life was highly controlled, it is very unlikely that one solo violinist would appear without the rest of the orchestra, which is what is shown in the photo and video that have been circulating online. Another thing that doesn't make sense in the AI-generated image is what the prisoners are wearing. "It doesn't correspond with the prisoner's uniform,' Bruttmann said. 'If you look at the photos that were taken in Auschwitz by the SS, you'll see that people didn't go around shirtless [Editor's note: like the man in the picture]. In a concentration camp, if you were shirtless, you were beaten or whipped.' Moreover, the man in the image shared online isn't wearing the striped uniform that most prisoners wore. The Auschwitz Memorial added that prisoners didn't wear belts like those in the AI-generated image. A worrying trend of AI-generated fake images of the Holocaust Representatives from the Auschwitz Memorial told our team about a growing – and worrying – online trend involving the use of AI to produce fake posts and stories about the Holocaust. In a post published on Facebook on June 8, the Memorial warned people to stay vigilant about pages appearing to share 'emotional tributes to Holocaust victims' that look like the posts shared by the museum. 'While some pages simply copy our posts, we can see more and more posts that either add AI-generated photos or are entirely fabricated,' the Memorial wrote in their post. The Memorial added that the posts featuring AI-generated images are 'dangerous distortions' of history that 'contribute to confusion and the erosion of historical accuracy'. They added that the stories accompanying these AI-generated images are often entirely fabricated, and that AI is used to generate fake photos not sourced from archives. "They exploit Holocaust memory for clicks, shares, and reach,' the Memorial said.
