As the United Nations (UN) International Telecommunication Union gears up towards its AI for Good Global Summit in Geneva this week, July 8-11th 2025, we, the undersigned artificial intelligence (AI) scholars, scientists, human rights advocates and experts, urge the UN to take a firm stand against tech sector complicity in grave violations of international law. We further call on the UN to end its role in legitimising the rampant and unchecked AI industry that is enabling gross human rights abuses and grave violations of international law without accountability and due process. Corporate actors involved in war crimes, crimes against humanity, human rights violations and genocide cannot be trusted to address the global crises they help create and perpetuate.
Since the AI for Good Summit’s inception in 2017, it has featured a plethora of tech companies that have a mounting track record of involvement in violations of international law. From enabling mass surveillance to building and supplying racially-discriminatory policing tools, to the rapid development and deployment of military AI, including cloud platforms and decision-support systems, tech companies’ role in harming societies and exacerbating human suffering has perhaps never been more pronounced than in the current unfolding genocide in Gaza.
The role of tech companies in facilitating grave violations of international law in Gaza
The Israeli military is deploying advanced technologies, including AI, to conduct near-automated attacks and bombings of densely populated civilian areas. AI-driven systems like ‘Habsora’ and ‘Lavender’ are used to rapidly generate “kill lists,” while tools like ‘Where’s Daddy’ enable the live-tracking of targets and alert the Israeli army to strike once they enter their family homes. These AI-driven operations have played a central role in the mass killing of civilians and the wanton destruction of the Gaza Strip. Several companies implicated in providing the technological infrastructure supporting these actions, such as Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Cisco, and Oracle, are also among the business entities that are either serving as sponsors, speakers, or in other ways involved with the UN-run summit in spite of increasing evidence of their persistent failure to uphold their responsibilities under the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) and other instruments of international law.
While some of these companies should be on notice for the risk of being implicated, and in some instances complicit, in very serious violations of international law, including the jus cogens crimes of apartheid and genocide perpetrated by Israel against Palestinians, they continue to provide substantial technical and technological assistance to Israel to wage its genocidal campaign in the Gaza Strip, as well as to maintain and expand its illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories. In her July 2025 report, From Economy of Occupation to Economy of Genocide, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories occupied since 1967 Francesca Albanese finds that tech firms, including those providing surveillance, AI and cloud infrastructure “[...] enable the denial of self-determination and other structural violations in the occupied Palestinian territory, including occupation, annexation and crimes of apartheid and genocide, as well as a long list of ancillary crimes and human rights violations, from discrimination, wanton destruction, forced displacement and pillage, to extrajudicial killing and starvation.”
Contrary to their heightened responsibility under the UNGPs to identify and mitigate human rights risks in armed conflicts, tech companies’ supply of AI tools and cloud computing services to the Israeli army have surged during the war. Google expanded its collaboration with the Israeli Ministry of Defense shortly after the start of the war on 7 October 2023, creating a dedicated cloud infrastructure to support military access to automation. Amazon Web Services provided additional server capacity to store extensive surveillance data on the entire population in Gaza and reportedly assisted in verifying airstrike targets on some occasions. Microsoft’s Azure cloud and AI services saw over a 60 fold growth in use, with engineers offering direct support to Israeli intelligence units notorious for their invasive and unlawful surveillance of Palestinians. Additionally, Google established a classified team of Israeli nationals to liaise with security agencies, while Palantir entered a strategic partnership with the Ministry of Defense, explicitly supporting Israel’s military campaign.
Palantir CEO Alex Karp admitted in a live-streamed Q and A that their tech was being used to “kill Palestinians,” while Google, whose own legal team warned them that their ‘Nimbus’ platform could be used by Israel to facilitate human rights violations, has continued to contract with Israeli authorities. Meanwhile, Microsoft publicly claimed that its technology is not harming civilians in Gaza while also admitting it has no insight into how its tools are used by the Israeli military.
These companies are acting contrary to the Advisory Opinion issued by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in July 2024, determining Israel’s continued presence in the occupied Palestinian territory as illegal and recognizing Israel’s system of apartheid and racial segregation. States, and by extension companies, are legally obliged not to recognize, and not to provide any aid or assistance that may maintain or entrench Israel's unlawful occupation, including through economic or trade dealings.
AI for Good cannot include genocide profiteers
The continued presence and participation of tech companies in high-level spaces for global governance, in spite of their possible involvement in grave international law violations, undermines global norms and security and the UN itself, erodes public trust, and paves the way for further disregard to human rights and dignity. In the name of multi-stakeholderism, companies are afforded the opportunity to gloss over their human rights abuses and possible implications in international crimes while benefiting from a regulatory and institutional environment that shies away from raising difficult questions and enforcing accountability in terms of divestments, prohibitions, and regulation. We cannot in good conscience accept that the same companies that are facilitating and exacerbating many of the atrocity crimes and unspeakable human suffering we are witnessing, are also allowed to situate themselves as the solution to global challenges.
Furthermore, we question the UN’s uncritical adoption of these technologies under the premise of “AI for good.” While we cannot dismiss the benefits of digital technologies to relieve or solve global problems in specific cases and under certain conditions, the hyped-up promise of AI remains without evidence—contrary to its well-documented harms. Rigorous scientific literature has long held that AI, and the industrial relations that underpin it, are often embroiled in concentrating power in deeply problematic and unchecked ways. As pointedly argued by AI scholar Pratyusha Ria Kalluri, asking whether AI is “good” or “fair” fundamentally displaces the discourse away from critical questions around how the technology is shifting power. In April 2025, over 200 scientists wrote an open letter in which they affirmed “the scientific consensus that artificial intelligence (AI) can exacerbate bias and discrimination in society, and that governments need to enact appropriate guardrails and governance in order to identify and mitigate these harms.” That such harms have not only been demonstrated, but far exceeded our collective imagination in terms of their role in destruction and dehumanisation in Gaza, should shake us all. As another group of AI experts has affirmed, we reject “the language of “ethical” AI and suggestions of “inclusivity” that do not destabilize current patterns of domination and address power asymmetries. We reject as half-measures any principles meant to tweak, reinforce, and whitewash the status quo, merely blunting its devastation.”
Countless UN resolutions and expert reports have warned against the perils and harms of AI in the absence of robust data protection and human rights guardrails. In its 2023 resolution, the UN General Assembly specifically calls on Member States “[t]o prevent harm to individuals caused by artificial intelligence systems and to refrain from or cease the use of artificial intelligence applications that are impossible to operate in compliance with international human rights law or that pose undue risks to the enjoyment of human rights, unless and until the adequate safeguards to protect human rights and fundamental freedoms are in place.”
The UNESCO Recommendation on the Ethics of Al, adopted by 193 States, affirms that "respect, protection and promotion of human dignity and rights as established by international law including human rights law, is essential throughout the life cycle of Al systems" and that "no human being or human community should be harmed or subordinated, whether physically, economically, socially, politically, culturally or mentally during any phase of the life cycle of Al systems".
The UN Working Group on Business and Human Rights has also warned in its most recent report about the harmful impacts of AI technologies on virtually all human rights when they are procured and deployed without proper human rights due diligence.
In this regard, we echo what the UN Secretary General has recently stated: the UN Charter, together with the principles of international law, human rights, and justice it espouses, is “not an a-la-carte menu” — and we agree with his call that “we cannot and must not normalize violations of its most basic principles.” At a time when international order norms are on a “knives’ edge,” it’s more urgent than ever for the UN to apply the same principles it advocates for across its entities and activities. It must also adhere to its own procurement policies before partnering with and deploying technologies from tech companies, including on Sustainable Procurement, the UN Global Compact, and the UN Supplier Code of Conduct which expects its suppliers to “support and respect the protection of internationally proclaimed human rights, and to ensure that they are not complicit in human rights abuses.” As the evidence of the harms of AI products increase, especially in highly sensitive contexts such as that of the occupied Palestinian Territories, the UN must cease its partnerships, transactions and deployment of afore-mentioned products, as has also been recommended in the Special Rapporteur on the situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories occupied since 1967’s July 2025 report.
The AI for Good Summit cannot be allowed to ethics-wash these corporations’ well-documented role in Israel’s colonial subjugation and attempted annihilation of the Palestinian people. Per the Genocide Convention Article III, complicity in genocide is as punishable as directly committing genocide, making the corporations aiding Israel’s genocide, as well as their managers and directors, criminally liable for aiding the state perpetrating it. Furthermore, by failing to regulate AI and cloud technologies — in spite of UN Secretary General’s own call to set clear regulations and prohibitions on autonomous weapons systems by 2026 — the UN and its member States empower tech companies to develop illegal applications of these technologies for use in committing grave human rights violations worldwide, posing a serious threat particularly to the most affected communities in the Global South.
Israel’s unfolding genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza, including the use of starvation as a method of war, and the relentless bombing and killing of Palestinians, should heed a definitive response from the international community: where AI and data-intensive technologies are used in a context of ongoing and deepening grave crimes, the UN itself should reorient its resources to stop the atrocities, facilitate bringing those responsible to justice, and protect those affected, rather than enabling the ethics-washing of those complicit in worsening these conditions.
The UN must act now
As AI and human rights experts, scholars, and advocates, we cannot allow the normalization of tech companies’ blatant complicity in facilitating Israel’s military operations in defiance of international law to go unchallenged or unnoticed, while company executives have demonstrated utter disregard and disdain for the human rights of Palestinians and their right to life, security, and human dignity. How can we be expected to believe in “Responsible AI,” “AI for Good,” “Trustworthy AI,” “AI Safety,” and “Ethical AI” in this context? Unless the UN takes action in this matter, these narratives and slogans ring hollow in the face of harrowing and colossal AI-enabled human death and suffering.
Given that the UN Charter explicitly states its aim to represent “we, the people,” we the undersigned people demand that:
At a time when we are witnessing the breakdown of global order and norms and our world is facing existential challenges, the least we expect from the UN system is to uphold its stated values instead of partnering with tech conglomerates powering and profiting from unlawful occupation and atrocity crimes. The quest for justice, peace, and accountability in these turbulent times demands affirmative action. Failing to do so not only risks what remains of the UN’s credibility, but also our rights, security, and dignity – now and for generations to come.