Israel\u2019s military has been using artificial intelligence to help choose its bombing targets in Gaza, sacrificing accuracy in favor of speed and killing thousands of civilians in the process, according to an investigation by Israel-based publications +972 Magazine<\/em> and Local Call<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The system, called Lavender, was developed in the aftermath of Hamas\u2019 October 7th attacks, the report claims. At its peak, Lavender marked 37,000 Palestinians in Gaza as suspected \u201cHamas militants\u201d and authorized their assassinations. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n Israel\u2019s military denied the existence of such a kill list in a statement to +972<\/em> and Local Call<\/em>. A spokesperson told CNN<\/a> that AI was not being used to identify suspected terrorists but did not dispute the existence of the Lavender system, which the spokesperson described as \u201cmerely tools for analysts in the target identification process.\u201d Analysts \u201cmust conduct independent examinations, in which they verify that the identified targets meet the relevant definitions in accordance with international law and additional restrictions stipulated in IDF directives,\u201d the spokesperson told CNN. The Israel Defense Forces did not immediately respond to The Verge<\/em>\u2019s request for comment.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In interviews with +972 <\/em>and Local Call<\/em>, however, Israeli intelligence officers said they weren\u2019t required to conduct independent examinations of the Lavender targets before bombing them but instead effectively served as \u201ca \u2018rubber stamp\u2019 for the machine\u2019s decisions.\u201d In some instances, officers\u2019 only role in the process was determining whether a target was male.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n To build the Lavender system, information on known Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad operatives was fed into a dataset\u00a0\u2014 but, according to one source who worked with the data science team that trained Lavender, so was data on people loosely affiliated with Hamas, such as employees of Gaza\u2019s Internal Security Ministry. \u201cI was bothered by the fact that when Lavender was trained, they used the term \u2018Hamas operative\u2019 loosely, and included people who were civil defense workers in the training dataset,\u201d the source told +972<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Lavender was trained to identify \u201cfeatures\u201d associated with Hamas operatives, including being in a WhatsApp group with a known militant, changing cellphones every few months, or changing addresses frequently. That data was then used to rank other Palestinians in Gaza on a 1\u2013100 scale based on how similar they were to the known Hamas operatives in the initial dataset. People who reached a certain threshold were then marked as targets for strikes. That threshold was always changing \u201cbecause it depends on where you set the bar of what a Hamas operative is,\u201d one military source told +972.<\/em> <\/p>\n<\/div>\n The system had a 90 percent accuracy rate, sources said, meaning that about 10 percent of the people identified as Hamas operatives weren\u2019t members of Hamas\u2019 military wing at all. Some of the people Lavender flagged as targets just happened to have names or nicknames identical to those of known Hamas operatives; others were Hamas operatives\u2019 relatives or people who used phones that had once belonged to a Hamas militant. <\/em>\u201cMistakes were treated statistically,\u201d a source who used Lavender told +972<\/em>. \u201cBecause of the scope and magnitude, the protocol was that even if you don\u2019t know for sure that the machine is right, you know statistically that it\u2019s fine. So you go for it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Intelligence officers were given wide latitude when it came to civilian casualties, sources told +972<\/em>. During the first few weeks of the war, officers were allowed to kill up to 15 or 20 civilians for every lower-level Hamas operative targeted by Lavender; for senior Hamas officials, the military authorized \u201chundreds\u201d of collateral civilian casualties, the report claims.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Suspected Hamas operatives were also targeted in their homes using a system called \u201cWhere\u2019s Daddy?\u201d officers told +972.<\/em> That system put targets generated by Lavender under ongoing surveillance, tracking them until they reached their homes \u2014 at which point, they\u2019d be bombed, often alongside their entire families, officers said. At times, however, officers would bomb homes without verifying that the targets were inside, wiping out scores of civilians in the process. \u201cIt happened to me many times that we attacked a house, but the person wasn\u2019t even home,\u201d one source told +972<\/em>. \u201cThe result is that you killed a family for no reason.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Mona Shtaya, a non-resident fellow at the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, told The Verge<\/em> that the Lavender system is an extension of Israel\u2019s use of surveillance technologies on Palestinians in both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Shtaya, who is based in the West Bank, told The Verge<\/em> that these tools are particularly troubling in light of reports that Israeli defense startups are hoping to export<\/a> their battle-tested technology abroad.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Since Israel\u2019s ground offensive in Gaza began, the Israeli military has relied on and developed a host of technologies to identify and target suspected Hamas operatives. In March, The<\/em> New York Times <\/em>reported<\/a> that Israel deployed a mass facial recognition<\/a> program in the Gaza Strip \u2014 creating a database of Palestinians without their knowledge or consent \u2014 which the military then used to identify suspected Hamas operatives. In one instance, the facial recognition tool identified Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha as a suspected Hamas operative. Abu Toha was detained for two days in an Israeli prison, where he was beaten and interrogated before being returned to Gaza.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Another AI system, called \u201cThe Gospel,\u201d was used to mark buildings or structures that Hamas is believed to operate from. According to a +972 <\/em>and Local Call <\/em>report<\/a> from November, The Gospel also contributed to vast numbers of civilian casualties. \u201cWhen a 3-year-old girl is killed in a home in Gaza, it\u2019s because someone in the army decided it wasn\u2019t a big deal for her to be killed \u2014 that it was a price worth paying in order to hit [another] target,\u201d a military source told the publications at the time.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u201cWe need to look at this as a continuation of the collective punishment policies that have been weaponized against Palestinians for decades now,\u201d Shtaya said. \u201cWe need to make sure that war times are not used to justify the mass surveillance and mass killing of people, especially civilians, in places like Gaza.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nChoosing targets<\/h4>\n<\/p>\n
Collateral damage<\/h4>\n<\/p>\n
AI-driven warfare<\/h4>\n<\/p>\n