Look at this picture

What do you see?

Context:

The picture blew up on social media because it depicts police outside the Louvre, which experienced a spectacular theft of Napoleonic jewels, which seems like a detail right out of Hercule Poirot or Arsène Lupin or Sherlock Holmes... and so... et voila... the frisson of this picture is remarkable

Is the picture real? Or is it #AI?

2/x

Now here is the problem

Because #AI fakes have trained you about "too good to be true" scenes, you immediately distrust the picture above

*That* is the problem

Where before a picture was a picture, now, for everyone, there is the bias of distrust. We, buried in cynicism now, distrust first, and discard evidence *on the bias of 'too good to be true'*

Here is another picture from the same scene by the same photographer (Thibault Camus, a photographer for The Associated Press):

3/x

"someone else altered it"

"the lighting is too perfect"

"it's not #AI it's photoshop"

etc

maybe the picture is real?

🤷

To be honest, I don't care

The picture is a prop for my point here:

*It's not about whether or not the picture is real or fake, it's about how we distrust everything now*

Pointless insipid endless arguments about real v fake... what is that replacing?

On far more important issues in the world

And that can be manipulated

Meta-deception

Deception, about deception

4/x

There's many multiple layers here

A picture, concerning a heist with deception... if that picture's a deception. Based on a preconception about fictional masters of deception. And the implications of it all about how we are becoming victims of #AI deception. Or, more deeply- how our biases about being deceived by lies, deceives us from seeing the truth: boomeranging self-deception

🫨 🫨 🫨

😵‍💫 🥴 😵

5/5