Rights groups call for a halt of AI tech use in the military
Rights groups and tech activists have warned against the increasing use of AI in the military, specifically citing Israel's genocide in Gaza as a dangerous precedent.
In a joint statement signed by more than a hundred people and organisations including Amnesty International, Access Now and the Stop Killer Robots Campaign, they warned that the expansion of AI in military "kill chains" risked greater civilian bloodshed and a lack of accountability.
They specifically pointed to Israel's genocide in Gaza, where the mass killing of more than 73,000 Palestinians has accompanied the widespread use of AI-based systems by the Israeli army.
Three systems in particular - Lavender, Gospel, and Where’s Daddy - have been used to identify targets for air strikes based on Israeli mass surveillance records of Palestinians in Gaza.
This has been pointed to as one of the reasons for the scale of the death toll in Gaza, with targets chosen by AI software with little or no human oversight.
Read more: Rights groups call for a halt of AI tech use in the military
AI robot signs are planted into the ground on the National Mall in an act of protest in Washington, DC, 6 March 2026 (Heather Diehl/AFP)