AI incident #672 ·
'Lavender' and 'The Gospel' AI Systems Reportedly Used in Gaza Targeting Operations with Civilian Harm Allegations
What happened
The AI system known as "Lavender" was reportedly used by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to assist in identifying individuals in Gaza for targeting, while a related system, "The Gospel," was reportedly used to help select and prioritize physical strike targets. Investigations reportedly suggest that these systems operated with limited human review and may have contributed to strikes associated with high civilian casualties. The extent of automation with human oversight, as well as the accuracy o
Only the incident metadata is stored here. The underlying news reports are on the AI Incident Database (CC BY-SA 4.0); use the links above to read them.
News reports (9)
Coverage catalogued by the AI Incident Database. Titles link to the original publisher; the text is not reproduced here.
Who was involved
- Alleged deployer
- Unit 8200, Israel Defense Forces
- Alleged developer
- Unit 8200, Israel Defense Forces
- Alleged harmed party
- Palestinians, Gazans, National Security And Intelligence Stakeholders
Classification (MIT AI Risk Repository taxonomy)
- Risk domain
- Malicious Actors & Misuse
- Causal entity
- AI
- Intent
- Intentional
- Timing
- Post-deployment
- Harm level
- —
- Sectors
- —
- Countries
- —
Risk entries describing this failure mode
Entries from the MIT AI Risk Repository coded to subdomain 4.2.
- Business operations/infrastructure damage
"Business operations/infrastructure damage - Damage, disruption, or destruction of a business system and/or its components due to malfunction, cyberattacks, etc."
- Violence/armed conflict
"Violence/armed conflict - Use or misuse of a technology system to incite, facilitate or conduct cyberattacks, security breaches, lethal, biological and chemical weapons development, resulting in violence and armed confl...
- Security & Defense
"AI could enable more serious incidents to occur by lowering the cost of devising cyber-attacks and enabling more targeted incidents. The same programming error or hacker attack could be replicated on numerous machines....
- Catastrophic risk due to autonomous weapons programmed with dangerous targets
"AI could enable autonomous vehicles, such as drones, to be utilized as weapons. Such threats are often underestimated."
- Hazardous Biological and Chemical Technologies
"AI systems such as LLMs, chemical LLMs (Skinnider et al., 2021; Moret et al., 2023), and other LLM- based biological design tools might soon facilitate the production of bioweapons, chemical weapons, and other hazardous...
- Warfare and Physical Harm
"The use of AI in warfare is highly alarming and may pose dangers to human safety (Hendrycks et al., 2023). Autonomous drone warfare is being aggressively pursued as a tactic in the current war in Ukraine (Meaker, 2023),...
- Cyber offence
"General- purpose AI systems could uplift the cyber expertise of individuals, making it easier for malicious users to conduct effective cyber- attacks, as well as providing a tool that can be used in cyber defence. Gener...
- Dual use science risks
"General- purpose AI systems could accelerate advances in a range of scientific endeavours, from training new scientists to enabling faster research workflows. While these capabilities could have numerous beneficial appl...
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- Anthropic Reportedly Identifies AI Misuse in Extortion Campaigns, North Korean IT Schemes, and Ransomware Sales
- LAMEHUG Malware Reportedly Integrates Large Language Model for Real-Time Command Generation in a Purported APT28-Linked Cyberattack
- Reported AI-Aided Development of Explosive Devices by Long Island Resident Michael Gann
- AI Chatbot Allegedly Used to Research Explosive Materials in Palm Springs Fertility Clinic Bombing