Human-in-the-loop Dilemmas: The Lavender System in Israel Defence Forces Operations

In the first week of April 2024, +972 Magazine and Local Call reported on an artificial intelligence (AI) based programme called ‘Lavender’. The magazine, published by a collective of Israeli-Palestinian journalists, uncovered troubling details concerning the deployment of ‘Lavender’ by the Israeli military in the ongoing conflict. According to the claims made by the report, the Lavender system played a central role in the unprecedented bombing in Gaza as Israel Defence Forces (IDF) used it to generate targets.1 Moreover, the system reportedly generated thousands of ‘potential’ targets and ‘suspected’ militants based on the information fed to the machine about ‘characteristics of known Hamas and [Palestinian Islamic Jihad] PIJ operatives’.