CiaraPeople keep sharing an image of a bird with a drop of water bursting on its head like a crown. It's AI, but people share it in good faith, believing it’s an amazing photo by a human of a real bird in a real moment of time. Meanwhile, humans who have taken amazing photos of real birds captured in real moments of time, like a hummingbird in ballet with a butterfly, get questioned in good faith by people who are tired of being cheated by AI-deceit. The way AI has broken social trust is distressing.
It's not, of course, generative AI that's deceiving people. It's the humans using AI to generate fake images and the humans who pass the fake images off as their own photos who are deceiving other humans.
JWcph, Radicalized By Decency@CiaraNi It just so happens that GenAI is the absolutely perfect tool for people who want to deceive other people...
@jwcph It is, and it makes it easy to deceive, but I don't think that absolves people from being responsible for deciding to use it to deceive. I hope we don't get to the stage where it's normalised completely or just shrugged at by a few.
Amorpheus@Amorpheus @jwcph I think both parts are deception. Even without text explicitly claiming it was a photo, the person posting knows it is being presented as a photo and will be seen as a photo of a real moment in time.
@CiaraNi @jwcph True. Still, the impact of the actual lie carried significantly more weight to it than the image itself.
I first just saw the image and thought... "this looks way to perfect". Then I read the text and went to "unbelievable... what are the odds for such an event". Now I am like... "the written word seems to have more impact on my plausibility control than my imagery vision".
@Amorpheus @jwcph Agreed. That's true. The use of text further manipulates us
@CiaraNi @Amorpheus indeed - the deliberate deceit is what cements the harmful effect; the most insane things are possible, if unlikely & it's taking away our capacity for wonder. Remember this pic? That's real, however fake it looks & it's flippin amazing - we should enjoy those things, not immediately assume they're part of somebody's malice.
@jwcph @Amorpheus Yes - this is a great example of what made me start moaning about this in the first place. It is upsetting to see fake images getting attention while the humans who took real amazing photos of real amazing moments of life on earth get asked if they used AI.
"We should enjoy those things, not immediately assume they're part of somebody's malice" - in an ideal world, yes. But the relentless AI deceit has left us in a situation where it's fair to wonder.
@CiaraNi @Amorpheus Yes, we have to, but the AI-fueled deceit is forcing us into a skepticism overload that can very easily make us cynical & suspicious.
Just earlier today I had to verify this pic & honestly I'm still not entirely sure of it (see the thread) - but it's clearly the sort of thing where, before AI, I would not assume that anyone would go through the trouble of photoshopping it, so I would have just taken it at its pretty cool face value...
@jwcph @Amorpheus Snap! I saw this image early and it felt 'off'. After a quick look, I moved on without interacting it. It felt like AI, it felt manipulated, but we can't be investigating every one. When in doubt now, I ignore and scroll on, muttering under by breath. (I only tooted about the 'water crown on bird' one because I saw it amid other toots where really good human photographers were being asked by unsure people if their real photos were AI. It was an awful contrast.)