Fake image alert: AI used to create images of events that never happened
We are not ready for the future these AI tools are rapidly bringing to us.
Social media platform Reddit is now being populated with realistic images of events that never occurred, such as The Great Cascadia Earthquake and Tsunami of 2001 and the Blue Plague in Russia. The images have been created with the help of the generative artificial intelligence (AI) platform, Midjourney.
Last week, Midjourney shot to fame for creating dramatic visuals of former U.S. President Donald Trump being arrested. These images were created using only text prompts provided by a user and demonstrated how powerful the technology was becoming in giving out realistic outputs.
The results were made possible with the fifth iteration of Midjourney’s generative AI, while the company has barely completed a year of official existence. The features are largely available to subscribers of the platform, who take to Reddit and Twitter to showcase what it is capable of.
AI-generated images of fake events
The Midjourney subreddit is a treasure trove of images generated by AI and shared by users to showcase their creations. On Friday, a user posted an image of the Pope wearing a white puffy coat, which was then shared on Twitter and presumed to be a real image by many people.
While this might be a minor episode that can be easily neglected or dismissed, some users have also created a series of images surrounding an event that mimics photojournalism.
One such event is the solar superstorm of 2012 which starts off with images of the Sun giving out some nasty coronal mass ejections (CMEs), captioned to be the largest ever recorded since 1859, famously known as the Carrington Event.
The thread of images then extends to two NASA spokespersons holding a press conference, then President Obama addressing the nation, scenes from airports where flights are grounded in anticipation of the geomagnetic storm, and New York City going into a preventive blackout to prevent grid overloading.
This is followed by a series of images of auroras spotted over famous landmarks in the U.S., U.K., Europe as well as Australia, as well as damage to the power infrastructure and response to the event.
An even more realistic thread of images showcases a 9.1 Earthquake and tsunami on the western coast of North America in 2001 that apparently destroyed houses and roads in Seattle, Portland, and also parts of Canada. The AI-generated images also showed fire breakouts at shipyards and rescue operations in progress. Emotions of anguish and pain also reflect in these images as one can barely make out if these events did not come to pass.
With no concrete ways of distinguishing if images are AI-generated or not, these can spread real quick on social media platforms and spread panic among people. Worse still, the fake images could be deliberately circulated on social media platforms to spread misinformation or incite violence.
The need of the hour is for domain experts to come together and find out ways where the technology can be used creatively without causing harm to others. Platforms will likely find it tough to keep up with the speed of innovation in this field, and that’s why the vigilance against accepting something as real must remain high.
Unless you really want to believe there was a Blue Plague in Russia.
This report contains information that first appeared on Vice.
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