Runaway growth of AI chatbots portends a future poised between utopia and dystopia

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Updated 18 April 2023
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Runaway growth of AI chatbots portends a future poised between utopia and dystopia

  • Engineers who had been slogging away for years in academia and industry are finally having their day in the sun
  • Job displacements and social upheavals are nothing compared to the extreme risks posed by advancing AI tech

DUBAI: It was way back in the late 1980s that I first encountered the expressions “artificial intelligence,” “pattern recognition” and “image processing.” I was completing the final semester of my undergrad college studies, while also writing up my last story for the campus magazine of the Indian Institute of Technology at Kharagpur.

Never having come across these technical terms during the four years I majored in instrumentation engineering, I was surprised to discover that the smartest professors and the brightest postgrad students of the electronics and computer science and engineering departments of my own college were neck-deep in research and development work involving AI technologies. All while I was blissfully preoccupied with the latest Madonna and Billy Joel music videos and Time magazine stories about glasnost and perestroika.




Now that the genie is out, the question is whether or not Big Tech is willing or even able to address the issues raised by the runaway growth of AI. (Supplied)

More than three decades on, William Faulkner’s oft-quoted saying, “the past is never dead. It is not even past,” rings resoundingly true to me, albeit for reasons more mundane than sublime. Terms I seldom bumped into as a newspaperman and editor since leaving campus — “artificial intelligence,” “machine learning” and “robotics” — have sneaked back into my life, this time not as semantic curiosities but as man-made creations for good or ill, with the power to make me redundant.

Indeed, an entire cottage industry that did not exist just six months ago has sprung up to both feed and whet a ravenous global public appetite for information on, and insights into, ChatGPT and other AI-powered web tools.




Teachers are seen behind a laptop during a workshop on ChatGpt bot organized by the School Media Service (SEM) of the Public education of the Swiss canton of Geneva on February 1, 2023. (AFP)

The initial questions about what kind of jobs would be created and how many professions would be affected, have given way to far more profound discussions. Can conventional religions survive the challenges that will spring from artificial intelligence in due course? Will humans ever need to wrack their brains to write fiction, compose music or paint masterpieces? How long will it take before a definitive cure for cancer is found? Can public services and government functions be performed by vastly more efficient and cheaper chatbots in the future?

Even until October last year, few of us employed outside of the arcane world of AI could have anticipated an explosion of existential questions of this magnitude in our lifetime. The speed with which they have moved from the fringes of public discourse to center stage is at once a reflection of the severely disruptive nature of the developments and their potentially unsettling impact on the future of civilization. Like it or not, we are all engineers and philosophers now.




Attendees watch a demonstration on artificial intelligence during the LEAP Conference in Riyadh last February. (Supplied)

By most accounts, as yet no jobs have been eliminated and no collapse of the post-Impressionist art market has occurred as a result of the adoption of AI-powered web tools, but if the past (as well as Ernest Hemingway’s famous phrase) is any guide, change will happen at first “gradually, then suddenly.”

In any event, the world of work has been evolving almost imperceptibly but steadily since automation disrupted the settled rhythms of manufacturing and service industries that were essentially byproducts of the First Industrial Revolution.

For people of my age group, a visit to a bank today bears little resemblance to one undertaken in the 1980s and 1990s, when withdrawing cash meant standing in an orderly line first for a metal token, then waiting patiently in a different queue to receive a wad of hand-counted currency notes, each process involving the signing of multiple counterfoils and the spending of precious hours.

Although the level of efficiency likely varied from country to country, the workflow required to dispense cash to bank customers before the advent of automated teller machines was more or less the same.

Similarly, a visit to a supermarket in any modern city these days feels rather different from the experience of the late 1990s. The row upon row of checkout staff have all but disappeared, leaving behind a lean-and-mean mix with the balance tilted decidedly in favor of self-service lanes equipped with bar-code scanners, contactless credit-card readers and thermal receipt printers.

Whatever one may call these endangered jobs in retrospect, minimum-wage drudgery or decent livelihood, society seems to have accepted that there is no turning the clock back on technological advances whose benefits outweigh the costs, at least from the point of view of business owners and shareholders of banks and supermarket chains.

Likewise, with the rise of generative AI (GenAI) a new world order (or disorder) is bound to emerge, perhaps sooner rather than later, but of what kind, only time will tell.




Just 4 months since ChatGPT was launched, Open AI's conversational chat bot is now facing at least two complaints before a regulatory body in France on the use of personal data. (AFP)

In theory, ChatGPT could tell too. To this end, many a publication, including Arab News, has carried interviews with the chatbot, hoping to get the truth from the machine’s mouth, so to say, instead of relying on the thoughts and prescience of mere humans.

But the trouble with ChatGPT is that the answers it punches out depend on the “prompts” or questions it is asked. The answers will also vary with every update of its training data and the lessons it draws from these data sets’ internal patterns and relationships. Put simply, what ChatGPT or GPT-4 says about its destructive powers today is unlikely to remain unchanged a few months from now.

Meanwhile, tantalizing though the tidbits have been, the occasional interview with the CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, or the CEO of Google, Sundar Pichai, has shed little light on the ramifications of rapid GenAI advances for humanity.




OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, left, and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. (AFP)

With multibillion-dollar investments at stake and competition for market share intensifying between Silicon Valley companies, these chief executives, as also Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, can hardly be expected to objectively answer the many burning questions, starting with whether Big Tech ought to declare “a complete global moratorium on the development of AI.”

Unfortunately for a large swathe of humanity, the great debates of the day, featuring polymaths who can talk without fear or favor about a huge range of intellectual and political trends, are raging mostly out of reach behind strict paywalls of publications such as Bloomberg, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, and Time.

An essay by Niall Ferguson, the pre-eminent historian of the ideas that define our time, published in Bloomberg on April 9, offers a peek into the deepest worries of philosophers and futurists, implying that the fears of large-scale job displacements and social upheavals are nothing compared to the extreme risks posed by galloping AI advancements.

“Most AI does things that offer benefits not threats to humanity … The debate we are having today is about a particular branch of AI: the large language models (LLMs) produced by organizations such as OpenAI, notably ChatGPT and its more powerful successor GPT-4,” Ferguson wrote before going on to unpack the downsides.

In sum, he said: “The more I read about GPT-4, the more I think we are talking here not about artificial intelligence … but inhuman intelligence, which we have designed and trained to sound convincingly like us. … How might AI off us? Not by producing (Arnold) Schwarzenegger-like killer androids (of the 1984 film “The Terminator”), but merely by using its power to mimic us in order to drive us insane and collectively into civil war.”

Intellectually ready or not, behemoths such as Microsoft, Google and Meta, together with not-so-well-known startups like Adept AI Labs, Anthropic, Cohere and Stable Diffusion API, have had greatness thrust upon them by virtue of having developed their own LLMs with the aid of advances in computational power and mathematical techniques that have made it possible to train AI on ever larger data sets than before.

Just like in Hindu mythology, where Shiva, as the Lord of Dance Nataraja, takes on the persona of a creator, protector and destroyer, in the real world tech giants and startups (answerable primarily to profit-seeking shareholders and venture capitalists) find themselves playing what many regard as the combined role of creator, protector and potential destroyer of human civilization.




Microsoft is the “exclusive” provider of cloud computing services to OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT. (AFP file)

While it does seem that a science-fiction future is closer than ever before, no technology exists as of now to turn back time to 1992 and enable me to switch from instrumentation engineering to computer science instead of a vulnerable occupation like journalism. Jokes aside, it would be disingenuous of me to claim that I have not been pondering the “what-if” scenarios of late.

Not because I am terrified of being replaced by an AI-powered chatbot in the near future and compelled to sign up for retraining as a food-delivery driver. Journalists are certainly better psychologically prepared for such a drastic reversal of fortune than the bankers and property owners in Thailand who overnight had to learn to sell food on the footpaths of Bangkok to make a living in the aftermath of the 1997 Asian financial crisis.

The regret I have is more philosophical than material: We are living in a time when engineers who had been slogging away for years in the forgotten groves of academe and industry, pushing the boundaries of AI and machine learning one autocorrect code at a time, are finally getting their due as the true masters of the universe. It would have felt good to be one of them, no matter how relatively insignificant one’s individual contribution.

There is a vicarious thrill, though, in tracking the achievements of a man by the name of P. Sundarajan, who won admission to my alma mater to study metallurgical engineering one year after I graduated.




Google Inc. CEO Sundar Pichai (C) is applauded as he arrives to address students during a forum at The Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur, India, on January 5, 2017. (AFP file)

Now 50 years old, he has a big responsibility in shaping the GenAI landscape, although he probably had no inkling of what fate had in store for him when he was focused on his electronic materials project in the final year of his undergrad studies. That person is none other than Sundar Pichai, whose path to the office of Google CEO went via IIT Kharagpur, Stanford University and Wharton business school.

Now, just as in the final semester of my engineering studies, I have no illusions about the exceptionally high IQ required to be even a writer of code for sophisticated computer programs. In an age of increasing specialization, “horses for courses” is not only a rational approach, it is practically the only game in town.

I am perfectly content with the knowledge that in the pre-digital 1980s, well before the internet as we know it had even been created, I had got a glimpse of the distant exciting future while reporting on “artificial intelligence,” “pattern recognition” and “image processing.” Only now do I fully appreciate how great a privilege it was.

 


Arab News honored in London on its 50th anniversary

Updated 11 June 2025
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Arab News honored in London on its 50th anniversary

  • Well-attended event organized by Global Arab Network at Frontline Club discussed news in the era of digital transformation and AI
  • Attendees saw preview of “Rewriting Arab News,” a film about the newspaper’s relaunch and transformation between 2016 and 2018

LONDON: To mark the 50th anniversary of Arab News, the Global Arab Network hosted on Friday an event at the Frontline Club featuring a documentary preview and a panel discussion on the newspaper’s digital transformation and the growing impact of artificial intelligence on the future of media.

Welcoming guests, Ghassan Ibrahim, founder of the London-based Global Arab Network, commended Arab News, saying it has become “one of the most trusted newspapers in the Middle East.”

“Global Arab Network works to help people from Arab countries and other parts of the world understand each other better. They support projects that connect cultures, support development, and share news and ideas,” he said.

“Their work is similar to what Arab News does — they both want to bring the East and West closer together.”

FASTFACT

The Frontline Club in London describes itself as “a gathering place for journalists, photographers and other likeminded people interested in international affairs” that champions “independent journalism and freedom of speech; rallies the “protection of press freedom;” and “fights for the safety of freelancers in doing their important work.”

In his address, Arab News Editor-in-Chief Faisal J. Abbas said: “We thank the Global Arab Network for hosting this event and presenting the documentary. We hope that the attendees can benefit from the Arab News digital transformation success story as we all brace for an AI-led future”

He added: “For the past 50 years, Arab News has been at the forefront of technology when it comes to news gathering, verification, research and distribution. We vow to continue on this path, and our latest podcast, launched using Google NotebookLM, is a testimony to our commitment.”

The Frontline Club event in London was attended by renowned dignitaries, diplomats and journalists including Saudi Editor Othman Al-Omair, Asharq Network’s Nabeel Khatib and Al Majalla Editor in Chief, Ibrahim Hamidi.

The Frontline Club event in London was attended by renowned dignitaries, diplomats and journalists. (AN photos)
The Frontline Club event in London was attended by renowned dignitaries, diplomats and journalists. (AN photos)

Members of parliament, lecturers from British universities and former ministers and ambassadors were also among the attendees.

The event saw a preview of “Rewriting Arab News,” a short film about the newspaper’s relaunch and digital transformation between 2016 and 2018, which was presented by Global Arab Network.

The event paid tribute to the brothers Hisham and Mohammed Ali Hafiz, who launched Arab News as Saudi Arabia’s first English-language daily newspaper, from a small garage in their hometown, Jeddah, while depicting the publication’s growth and milestones in the runup to it relaunch.

The evening also discussed how Arab News is consistently launching new initiatives and projects as part of its preparations for an AI-driven future.

“In 2000, less than 7 percent of the world’s population was connected to the internet; 25 years later, more than 60 percent of the world is connected to the internet,” Abbas said.

“We are at the brink of an AI revolution that is already happening, and the evolution of the news industry continues. We hope that Arab news can continue this challenge and thrive under this challenge.”

Arab News was established in 1975 under the slogan, “The Middle East’s Leading English Language Daily,” to give Arabs a voice in English while documenting the major transformations taking place across the Middle East.

In April 2018, Arab News changed its 43-year-old logo with a new one as well as its motto to “The Voice of a Changing Region.” The newspaper relaunched with a new design and a new approach to stories that it believed was better suited to the internet age.

“Since 1975, Arab News has been the voice of the Arab world and the newspaper of record for Saudi Arabia and the wider region. As this region changes, and as the Arab world faces new challenges and new political, social and economic realities, so must that voice change. And so must Arab News,” the newspaper said in an editorial on April 4.

Arab News is marking its 50th anniversary at a shifting moment, as Lebanon and Syria form new governments and the Middle East prepares for a high-level conference on the Palestinian two-state solution, co-chaired by Saudi Arabia and France, in New York this June.

“It’s remarkable looking back at history to see the pattern of how history repeats itself, but sometimes it could be a happy ending,” said Abbas.

A panel discussion after the screening of the documentary featured Chris Doyle, director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding (Caabu); Juan Senor, partner at Innovation Media Consulting Group; and Abbas.

“Like Arab News, tech giants Apple and Google also started in garages — there’s something to be said about that,” Doyle said.

He praised Arab News for consistently reinventing itself “not just to keep up with the times, but to stay ahead of them.”

In April, Arab News launched its 50th anniversary collection, highlighting key events that shaped the Middle East over the past five decades, alongside the newspaper’s own evolution.

As part of its digital transformation efforts and complementing the anniversary project, Arab News released a podcast series last month. Produced using Google’s AI-powered research tool, NotebookLM, it features artificial hosts and AI-generated voices recounting pivotal moments that defined the region’s recent history.

Senor said: “Arab News has consistently set the standard for English-language journalism in the region, offering clarity and credibility at a time when balanced narratives about the Middle East are more important than ever.”

He added: “Arab News has played a crucial role in elevating regional voices that were often overlooked or misrepresented in international discourse — it’s journalism with purpose, not just headlines.”

As part of the same series of initiatives marking its 50th anniversary, Arab News hosted a special reception and talk last month in collaboration with Google on the opening day of the Arab Media Summit in Dubai in the UAE.

During the May 26 reception, Mona Al-Marri, director-general of Dubai Media Office, Government of Dubai, said: “I hope that all media outlets in our region follow in the steps of Arab News, because this is when you set a good working model for the whole region. … Arab News is leading this transformation.”

In a region where over 50 percent of the population is young, she added, “we should all follow this model.”

In his keynote speech at the event, Khalfan Belhoul, CEO of the Dubai Future Foundation, said: “Let’s all agree that how we create and consume media is changing dramatically. Look at the average attention span, which is eight seconds.”

He said the disruptive power of AI — from disinformation to audience mistrust — makes the “human touch” more vital than ever. “AI may be the hero of the next media chapter, but self-critique, adaptability and editorial responsibility will define its success,” Belhoul said.

Arab News, headquartered in Riyadh, has expanded its digital voice by establishing bureaus in London, Pakistan and Dubai, besides editions published in French and Japanese.


France eyes social media ban for under-15s after school stabbing

Updated 11 June 2025
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France eyes social media ban for under-15s after school stabbing

  • A secondary school pupil was arrested on Tuesday after fatally stabbing a 31-year-old school assistant during a bag search in Nogent, eastern France
  • President Emmanuel Macron said France would move ahead with a ban if the EU fails to make progress on a proposal to ban the platform for children in the coming months

PARIS: French authorities have announced plans to ban social media for under-15s and the sale of knives to minors after the murder of a teaching assistant by a 14-year-old boy plunged the country into shock.

A secondary school pupil was arrested on Tuesday after killing a 31-year-old school assistant with a knife during a bag search in Nogent in eastern France.

Friends and well-wishers left flowers and messages of support in front of the secondary school struck by the tragedy.

“We share your pain,” read one message.

Laurence Raclot, who knew the teaching assistant, Melanie, said she was “stunned.”

“She was great with kids,” Raclot said. “In a quiet little town, we never would have thought this could happen.”

A former hairdresser, Melanie had retrained and worked at the school since September. She was the mother of a four-year-old boy and a councillor in a village near Nogent.

“There are no words,” added another local, Sabrina Renault. “It’s really sad for her whole family, for that little boy who’s left without his mum.”

Pupils and parents were seen entering and leaving the school, where a psychological support unit has been set up.

The suspect will remain in police custody for a further 24 hours, until Thursday morning, a police source told AFP on Wednesday. Little information has been released about his motive.

In the wake of the attack, authorities promised a raft of measures to tackle knife crime among children.

“I am proposing banning social media for children under 15,” President Emmanuel Macron said on X on Tuesday evening. “Platforms have the ability to verify age. Let’s do it,” he added.

Backed by France and Spain, Greece has spearheaded a proposal for how the EU should limit children’s use of online platforms as evidence shows that social media can have negative effects on children’s mental and physical health.

Macron said on Tuesday that if no progress was made within several months, then France would go ahead with the ban unilaterally.

“We cannot wait,” he told broadcaster France 2.

France has in recent years seen several attacks on teachers and pupils by other schoolchildren.

In March, police started random searches for knives and other weapons concealed in bags at and around schools.

On Wednesday, Prime Minister Francois Bayrou’s office said a ban on the sale of knives to minors will be implemented by a decree issued within the next two weeks.

Speaking to broadcaster TF1 on Tuesday evening, Bayrou said that the measure would come into force “immediately.”

The list will include “any knife that can be used as a weapon,” he said.

He also said parents and educators should be watching for “signs that a teenager is not doing well,” while acknowledging that there was a shortage of psychologists.

Bayrou has also called for a trial of metal detectors in schools.

Education Minister Elisabeth Borne called for a minute’s silence to be held in all French schools at midday on Thursday to honor the memory of the teaching assistant.

“The entire educational community is in shock, as is the whole nation,” she told France Inter radio on Wednesday.

Borne said she was “open to anything” to improve safety but added that ceramic blades would be invisible to metal detectors.

She also said that young people should be protected from “overexposure to screens.”

But trade unions said they were not sure how these proposals would be implemented and enforced.

“Teaching assistants have primarily educational duties within the school environment,” said Sophie Venetitay, general secretary of the SNES-FSU teachers’ union.

But, she added, “little by little, we have seen attempts to turn them into security guards.”

Remy Reynaud of the CGT Educ’action union criticized the government’s decision to introduce bag searches outside schools.

“They increase tensions,” he said.

“School management are pressuring teaching assistants to participate in the searches, which is not part of their duties.”


Musk regrets some of his Trump criticisms, says they ‘went too far’

Updated 11 June 2025
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Musk regrets some of his Trump criticisms, says they ‘went too far’

  • ‘I regret some of my posts about President @realDonaldTrump last week. They went too far’

WASHINGTON: Elon Musk, the world’s richest person and Donald Trump’s former adviser, said Wednesday he regretted some of his recent criticisms of the US president, after the pair’s public falling-out last week.

“I regret some of my posts about President @realDonaldTrump last week. They went too far,” Musk wrote on his social media platform X.

Musk’s expression of regret came just days after Trump threatened the tech billionaire with “serious consequences” if he sought to punish Republicans who vote for a controversial spending bill.

Their blistering break-up – largely carried out on social media before a riveted public since Thursday last week – was ignited by Musk’s harsh criticism of Trump’s so-called “big, beautiful” spending bill, which is currently before Congress.

Some lawmakers who were against the bill had called on Musk – one of the Republican Party’s biggest financial backers in last year’s presidential election – to fund primary challenges against Republicans who voted for the legislation.

“He’ll have to pay very serious consequences if he does that,” Trump, who also branded Musk “disrespectful,” told NBC News on Saturday, without specifying what those consequences would be.

Trump also said he had “no” desire to repair his relationship with the South African-born Tesla and SpaceX chief, and that he has “no intention of speaking to him.”

In his post on Wednesday, Musk did not specify which of his criticisms of Trump had gone “too far.”

The former allies had seemed to have cut ties amicably about two weeks ago, with Trump giving Musk a glowing send-off as he left his cost-cutting role at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

But their relationship cracked within days as Musk described the spending bill as an “abomination” that, if passed by Congress, could define Trump’s second term in office.

Trump hit back at Musk’s comments in an Oval Office diatribe and from there the row detonated, leaving Washington stunned.

“Look, Elon and I had a great relationship. I don’t know if we will anymore. I was surprised,” Trump told reporters.

Musk, who was Trump’s biggest donor to his 2024 campaign, also raised the issue of the Republican’s election win.

“Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate,” he posted, adding: “Such ingratitude.”

Trump later said on his Truth Social platform that cutting billions of dollars in subsidies and contracts to Musk’s companies would be the “easiest way” to save the US government money. US media have put the value of the contracts at $18 billion.

With real political and economic risks to their falling out, both appeared to inch back from the brink on Friday, with Trump telling reporters “I just wish him well,” and Musk responding on X: “Likewise.”

Trump had spoken to NBC on Saturday after Musk deleted one of the explosive allegations he had made during their fallout, linking the president with disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.

Musk had alleged that the Republican president is featured in unreleased government files on former associates of Epstein, who died by suicide in 2019 while he faced sex trafficking charges.

Trump was named in a trove of deposition and statements linked to Epstein that were unsealed by a New York judge in early 2024. The president has not been accused of any wrongdoing in the case.

“Time to drop the really big bomb: (Trump) is in the Epstein files,” Musk posted on X. “That is the real reason they have not been made public.”

Musk did not reveal which files he was talking about and offered no evidence for his claim.

He appeared to have deleted those tweets by Saturday morning.


Turkish court issues arrest warrant for owner of pro-opposition TV channel

Updated 11 June 2025
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Turkish court issues arrest warrant for owner of pro-opposition TV channel

  • Arrest warrant for Cafer Mahiroglu, owner of Halk TV, issued as part of an investigation into an alleged criminal organization
  • Several main opposition CHP members including district mayors were arrested under the investigation

ANKARA: An Istanbul court has issued an arrest warrant for the owner of a television channel aligned with Turkiye’s main opposition party on charges of bid-rigging, the prosecutor’s office said late on Tuesday.

The arrest warrant for Cafer Mahiroglu, owner of Halk TV, was issued as part of an investigation into an alleged criminal organization suspected of rigging public tenders by bribing public officials.

Several main opposition CHP members including district mayors were arrested under the investigation, part of a widening legal crackdown against the jailed mayor of Istanbul, President Tayyip Erdogan’s main political rival, and the opposition.

Mahiroglu, a Turkish businessperson who lives in London, denied the charges in a post on X.

“I am being accused based on the fabricated false statements and slander of someone I have never met or seen in my life,” he said, adding that he has been living abroad for 35 years.

“So, there is a price to be the owner of Halk TV, the people’s television, and to defend democracy, rights and law.”

He did not say if he would return to Turkiye to contest the charges.

Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu of the Republican People’s Party (CHP), who leads Erdogan in some opinion polls, was jailed in March pending trial on corruption charges, which he denies.

His arrest triggered mass protests, economic turmoil and broad accusations of government influence over the judiciary and anti-democratic applications. The government has denied the accusations and said the judiciary is independent.

Since his arrest, authorities have detained dozens of CHP members, officials from the Istanbul municipality, and other CHP-run municipalities.


Media groups condemn arrest of 2 journalists aboard Madleen boat

Updated 11 June 2025
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Media groups condemn arrest of 2 journalists aboard Madleen boat

  • The journalists were identified as Yanis Mhamdi, from the independent media outlet Blast, and Omar Faiad, a reporter for Al Jazeera

LONDON: Media groups have condemned the arrest of two French journalists who were on board the Gaza-bound Madleen boat, which was intercepted by the Israeli military on Monday.

The journalists were identified as Yanis Mhamdi, from the independent media outlet Blast, and Omar Faiad, a reporter for Al Jazeera.

In a statement, the Committee to Protect Journalists called for the immediate release of journalists who were part of the pro-Palestinian convoy of activists delivering aid to Gaza as a symbolic protest against the ongoing war and to raise awareness of the humanitarian crisis.

It urged EU leaders to pressure Israel to “stop all assaults on press freedom and protect journalists.”

Condemning the arrest, Reporters Without Borders said: “Boarding a civilian vessel in international waters to intercept a crew that included two French journalists documenting a peaceful humanitarian initiative is not only illegal, but constitutes a serious violation of international law and press freedom.”

Meanwhile, the Israeli Foreign Ministry said the activists and journalists aboard the boat were deported on Tuesday morning from Ben Gurion Airport to their home countries.

“Those who refuse to sign deportation documents and leave Israel will be brought before a judicial authority, in accordance with Israeli law, to authorize their deportation. Consuls from the passengers’ home countries met them at the airport,” the Foreign Ministry posted on X.

The ministry also posted pictures of the renowned climate activist Greta Thunberg on a flight to Sweden following her deportation.