SynthID exposes fake video of West Bank olive trees being uprooted

A video viewed more than 200,000 times on X falsely purported to show Israeli bulldozers uprooting olive trees in the West Bank. The footage, which had circulated since Oct. 14, was generated by artificial intelligence rather than depicting a real incident. The clip showed bulldozers tearing through an olive grove and was shared by accounts expressing pro-Palestinian views. It was also posted by the Palestinian Authority’s communications team before being removed, as well as by the Palestinian ambassador in the Ivory Coast and the Palestinian media outlet Quds. Tal Hagin identified the Palestinian Authority team’s earlier post. A check with SynthID, Google’s AI-content detection system, found a watermark indicating the video had been produced with Gemini. The apparent creator had placed a thumbs-up image over the lower-right part of the frame, where Gemini’s visible watermark normally appears. Other flaws in the footage pointed to its artificial origin. A digger’s shovel appeared to have spikes before becoming normal three seconds later, while an olive tree in the background seemed to fall before the machine struck it. Google launched SynthID in 2023 to identify AI-generated images, video and audio through imperceptible watermarks. On Oct. 7, it expanded English-language access to its SynthID Detector globally. The company said the tool could check material made with Google AI and partners including OpenAI, NVIDIA and Kakao, and that it had watermarked more than 180 billion images and videos by that date. The false video circulated amid genuine, documented attacks on Palestinian olive groves. Reuters photographs showed Israeli Army bulldozers uprooting olive trees in Deir Nizam, in the central West Bank, in late September. The Palestinian Ministry of Agriculture said at least 100,000 West Bank olive trees had been destroyed, uprooted or burned since 2023. The UN reported that at least 160 settler attacks connected to the olive harvest were recorded in the first two weeks of October. It said 286,000 olive trees in the West Bank had been damaged from 2023 through the end of September, including 100,000 during 2026 before the harvest began. The ministry put Palestinian olive-production losses since October 2023 at $157 million.