Israel using AI to help target Hamas leaders, locate hostages in tunnels — report

Israel has used artificial intelligence tools to target Hamas leaders amid the war in Gaza, according to a report in the New York Times.

The report opens with a strike at the end of October 2023 that targeted Ibrahim Biari, the commander of Hamas’s Central Jabalia Battalion, who the newspaper says the Israeli military was able to locate by using an AI-infused audio tool to track where he was making phone calls from.

The Israel Defense Forces said the strike that killed Biari, in which dozens of civilians were said to have been killed, targeted a Hamas tunnel complex under the densely populated camp. The incident is being investigated by the military.

In addition to concerns over civilian casualties, Israeli and US officials quoted by the New York Times say there were also instances in which the AI technology resulted in mistaken identifications and arrested.

The report says that Israel employed AI to identify partly obscured or wounded faces using facial recognition, create lists of possible targets and make an Arabic chatbot to scan and analyze text messages and social media, with many of these technologies created in a partnership between Military Intelligence’s Unit 8200 and reservists employed at major leading tech firms known as “The Studio.”

Additionally, Israel reportedly also used the same audio tool that helped locate Biari as part of its efforts to find hostages held in tunnels beneath Gaza, with a pair of Israeli officers saying it has been sharpened over time to more accurately locate people.