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The fake Auschwitz images distorting Holocaust history

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July 29, 2025

Several AI-generated images allegedly depicting historical events or imagery from Auschwitz during the Nazi era have been circulating on social networks. While many users can identify them as fake, experts warn that such images deceive some viewers, show disrespect towards the real victims and distort the historical memory of the Holocaust.

AI researchers, historians and memorial institutions are warning that these artificial recreations of historical events distort our collective memory of the Holocaust. Toby Walsh, the Chief Scientist of AI Institute at UNSW Sydney explains: "The problem, then, is you stop believing the things that are real. It's not just the things that are fake that you see, and you don't believe. It's the things that are real, these that you see, and you also don't believe anymore." In this report, DW asks: What do these AI-generated pictures and videos do to our understanding of the past? Who is sharing this kind of fake content and for what purposes? And, are we entering a new era in which we will no longer be able to differentiate fake narratives from actual historical and documented facts? 

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