BBC reveals web of spammers who benefit from AI Holocaust images

An international network of spammers posts AI-generated images of victims of Holocaust on Facebook, has discovered a BBC study into “AI Slop”.

Organizations that focus on preserving the memory of the Holocaust say that the images are saddened by survivors and families.

They also criticized the parent company Meta of Facebook and say that it enables users to convert the atrocity on its platform into an “emotional game”.

There are only a handful of real photos from the Auschwitz concentration camp during the Second World War.

But in recent months, AI -Spammers have posted fake images that claim to be from the camp, such as a prisoner who plays a violin or loved ones who play on the boundaries of fences, tens of thousands of likes and shares.

“Here we have someone who comes up with the stories … For a kind of strange emotional game that happens on social media,” said Pwel Sawicki, a spokesperson for the Auschwitz Memorial in Poland.

“This is not a game. This is a real world, real suffering and real people we want and have to commemorate.”

The BBC has kept many of these images to the accounts of a network of content makers established in Pakistan who work closely together on how they can earn money on Facebook. They are the Monetization (CM) program of Gaming Meta, a “only invitation” system that pays users for good performing content and views.

One account called Abdul Mughees, mentioned as living in Pakistan, posted screenshots that claimed to have earned $ 20,000 through schemes for generating income on social media, including meta’s. Another message seems to show that the account built up more than 1.2 billion views on the content over the four -month period.

We have not been able to verify the income of a maker independently.

Among the many Facebook reports of the Abdul Mughees account are various AI generated photos of fictional Holocaust misconduct and fake stories that include a child hiding under floor boards or a baby who was left on train tracks outside of a concentration camp.

The analysis of the BBC of the online activities of the account and dozens of others such as suggesting that they almost exclusively post “AI -Lop”.

The term refers to AI-generated images and text of low quality, usually produced in large parts and spamed on social media.

Auschwitz has become a popular subject for pages and groups with a history theme. Some with names such as “Timeless Tales” and “History Haven” posted more than 50 times a day.

In June, the Auschwitz Museum warned that such accounts steal its posts, processing them via AI models and often warning historical details or fully warming stories and victims. In a Facebook message, the museum said that these images were a “dangerous distortion” those “victims did not respect and harass their memory”.

Mr. Sawicki said that the tsunami of fake images undermined the mission of the Auschwitz Memorial to increase the consciousness of the Holocaust.

“We have already started to get reactions to our Facebook messages that” Oh, this is a photo generated by AI, “he said.

Survivors and families are also disrupted by the Gulf of Holocaust AI slop, according to an organization that promotes Holocaust education and research.

“They don’t quite understand what they see,” said Dr. Robert Williams, from the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.

He said that survivors of Holocaust felt a “certain sense of sadness that this is allowed”, despite the government and philanthropic investments in awareness campaigns.

“They feel that their efforts have not been enough,” he said.

“That is very sad to consider, because the last survivors will leave us soon.”

Meta does not deliberately encourage users to post false stories, including the Holocaust, but his system rewards messages with high involvement. The BBC has also found AI Slop accounts in India, Vietnam, Thailand and Nigeria.

To understand why these networks are mass production -specific species, the BBC spoke with a Pakistani man Fazal Rahman, who is registered for various income schedules for generating social media and says that this work has become his only source of income.

Although he says that he himself does not make Holocaust images and did not know what the word meant when he initially asked, he works in the same Facebook groups as those who do.

Mr. Rahman said that a Facebook page with 300,000 followers could earn the owner $ 1,000 USD per month if the “premium content” had focused on higher value of the UK, the US and Europe. He estimates that Western views were worth eight times more by post than those from Asia.

He said that history as the subject was a reliable engine for online traffic.

Other makers seem to agree. The BBC has seen step-by-step instructional videos about how popular AI models can be used to generate continuous fake history images and text.

In one video the maker asked the AI ​​chatbot to list important historical events that they could use as a basis for making content and the Holocaust was one of the answers.

Other advice from some makers include tips on how to mislead the public, by making their page thinking as other entities to build the public and to be eligible for Meta’s CM program.

Facebook has a page transparency function, with which users can follow the previous names of pages. With this, the BBC was found many pages that Holocaust Ai -Lop had been posted that were once set as a series of different entities, including official fire brigade departments in the US, commercial companies and American influencers – all without their permission.

According to the public messages from the makers, it can also be sold or rented to those who want to break through in the market for content creator.

The BBC asked Meta for various profiles that had posted the AI ​​content with Holocaust theme and also seemed to have been busy with misleading practices.

Various profiles and groups were removed, including those originally marked by the Auschwitz Memorial in June.

A spokesperson for the tech giant said that although those fake images did not violate the content policy, it investigated and discovered that they have violated his rules on imitation or trade of pages.

“We have removed the pages and groups with us and eliminated the accounts behind them for violating our policy on spam and non -authentic behavior,” they said.

AI has been used in the past to commemorate the Holocaust and bring the stories of real victims to life, but the Dr. Williams of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance warns that there is a risk that this can contribute to a feeling that the history of the Holocaust has somehow been manufactured.

“Every form of extreme manipulation is something that we have to shun,” he said.

Additional report from Umer Draz Nangiana, BBC Urdu