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> A BBC journalist ran the image through an AI chatbot which identified key spots that may have been manipulated. The image is likely AI generated in this case

by tyushk 9mo ago

> A BBC journalist ran the image through an AI chatbot which identified key spots that may have been manipulated. The image is likely AI generated in this case, but this does not seem like the best strategy for finding out if an image is AI generated.

1659447091 9mo ago
Under the other photos it says A photo taken by a BBC North West Tonight reporter showed the bridge is undamaged and A BBC North West reporter visited the bridge today and confirmed it was undamaged They may have first ran the photo through an AI, but they also went out to verify. Or ran it after verification to understand it better, maybe
- lazystar 9mo ago
  So.. is this where the AI hype train starts to lose steam? One AI hallucinated and caused the incident, and another AI program just wasted everyone's time after it was unable to verify the issue. Sounds like AI was utterly useless to everyone involved.
  - ceejayoz 9mo ago
    > Sounds like AI was utterly useless to everyone involved. Not the hoaxer!
  - 1659447091 9mo ago
    > Sounds like AI was utterly useless to everyone involved Maybe. Imo, I think the advances in AI and the hype toward generated everything will actually be the current societies digitally-obsessed course-correction back to having a greater emphases on things like theater, live music, conversing with people in-person or even strangers (the horror, I know) simply to connect/consume more meaningfully. It'll level out integrating both instead of being so digitally loop-sided as humans adapt to enjoy both.* To me, this shows a need for more local journalism that has been decimated by the digital world. By journalism, I mean it in a more traditional sense, not bloggers and podcast (no shade some follow principled, journalistic integrity -- as some national "traditional" one don't). Local journalism is usually held to account by the community, and even though the worldwide BBC site has this story, it was the local reporters they had that were able to verify. If these AI stories/events accelerate a return to local reporting with a worldwide audience, then all the better. * I try to be a realist, but when I err, it tends to be on the optimist side
    - nicoburns 9mo ago
      The tech giants sucking up all the ad revenue is what killed local journalism. Unless you can find a solution to that problem (or an alternstove fundong model), it's not coming back.
      - DrewADesign 9mo ago
        But just think of all the people that didn’t have to receive a paycheck because of all this efficiency! It’s really incredible how the supposedly unassailable judgement of mass consumer preference consistently leads our society to produce worse shit so we can have more or it, and rewards the chief enshittifiers with mega yachts.
        kiba 9mo ago
        They have powerful untaxed monopolies in excess of the economic value tech companies themselves generate. At some point, the value of their services come from the people who use their sites.
  - bigiain 9mo ago
    > One AI hallucinated and caused the incident I suspect that AI was prompted to create the image, not that this was an incidental "hallucination". Cynical-me suspects this may have been a trial run by malicious actors experimenting with disrupting critical infrastructure.
    - permonst 9mo ago
      There is precedent for state actors putting a lot of effort into a hoax like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbian_Chemicals_Plant_explosion_hoax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbian_Chemicals_Plant_expl...
vkou 9mo ago
It's not, but when you have 30 minutes to ship a story...
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
Blackthorn 9mo ago
Yeah, talk about begging the question. Yikes.
informal007 9mo ago
This is the fast way they can try, but it shouldn't be the most trustworthy way and shouldn't be in report.
skissane 9mo ago
Someone I know is a high school English teacher (being vague because I don’t want to cause them trouble or embarrassment). They told me they were asking ChatGPT to tell them whether their students’ creative writing assignments were AI-generated or not-I pointed out that LLMs such as ChatGPT have poor reliability at this; classifier models trained specifically for this task perform somewhat better, yet also have their limitations. In any event, if the student has access to whatever model the teacher is using to test for AI-generation (or even comparable models), they can always respond adversarially by tinkering with an AI-generated story until it is no longer classified as AI-generated
- techjamie 9mo ago
  Reminds me of a Reddit story that made the rounds about a professor asking ChatGPT if it wrote papers, to which it frequently responded afirmatively. He sent an angry email about it, and a student responded by showing a response from ChatGPT claiming it wrote his email.
  - gblargg 9mo ago
    > student responded by showing a response from ChatGPT claiming it wrote his email Which is actually fine. Students need to do their own homework. A teacher can delegate writing emails.
    - recursive 9mo ago
      But if he didn't delegate, and it said he did, that would suggest that the methodology doesn't really work.
    - arcanemachiner 9mo ago
      I believe you just got whooshed.
      - MengerSponge 9mo ago
        A person arguing in favor of LLM use failed to comprehend the context or argument? Unpossible!
maxlin 9mo ago
Yeah that hardly talks of the "journalist" being good at their job. At worst they asked a biased question like "has this photo been AI generated and if then how" or worse. People tend to think that AI is like a specific kind of human which knows other AI things better. But we should expect better from people that do writing as their job.
Davidzheng 9mo ago
If it's nano banana you can give it to Gemini bc it has artifacts
- RestartKernel 9mo ago
  All these tool integrations are making it increasingly difficult to explain to non-tech people what these chatbots are capable of. Even more so as multi-modality improves (at some point image generation went from a distinct tool to arguably an inherent part the the models).
jameslk 9mo ago
ChatGPT: This looks like AI. I can tell from some of the pixels and from seeing quite a bit of training data in my time.
deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
hexbin010 9mo ago
Do you not think even BBC "journalists" are suffering from immense pressures to use AI for efficiency? It's everywhere
Nasrudith 9mo ago
Yeah, it is frankly just plain bad epistemology to expect an AI chatbot to have answers on a matter such as this. Like trying to get this week's lotto numbers by seeking a reading in bible passages and verses. There is no way that the information was encoded within in there as it would violate causality. At best you'd have coincidental collisions only.

by tyushk 9mo ago

1659447091 9mo ago

Under the other photos it says A photo taken by a BBC North West Tonight reporter showed the bridge is undamaged and A BBC North West reporter visited the bridge today and confirmed it was undamaged They may have first ran the photo through an AI, but they also went out to verify. Or ran it after verification to understand it better, maybe

lazystar 9mo ago
So.. is this where the AI hype train starts to lose steam? One AI hallucinated and caused the incident, and another AI program just wasted everyone's time after it was unable to verify the issue. Sounds like AI was utterly useless to everyone involved.
- ceejayoz 9mo ago
  > Sounds like AI was utterly useless to everyone involved. Not the hoaxer!
- 1659447091 9mo ago
  > Sounds like AI was utterly useless to everyone involved Maybe. Imo, I think the advances in AI and the hype toward generated everything will actually be the current societies digitally-obsessed course-correction back to having a greater emphases on things like theater, live music, conversing with people in-person or even strangers (the horror, I know) simply to connect/consume more meaningfully. It'll level out integrating both instead of being so digitally loop-sided as humans adapt to enjoy both.* To me, this shows a need for more local journalism that has been decimated by the digital world. By journalism, I mean it in a more traditional sense, not bloggers and podcast (no shade some follow principled, journalistic integrity -- as some national "traditional" one don't). Local journalism is usually held to account by the community, and even though the worldwide BBC site has this story, it was the local reporters they had that were able to verify. If these AI stories/events accelerate a return to local reporting with a worldwide audience, then all the better. * I try to be a realist, but when I err, it tends to be on the optimist side
  - nicoburns 9mo ago
    The tech giants sucking up all the ad revenue is what killed local journalism. Unless you can find a solution to that problem (or an alternstove fundong model), it's not coming back.
    - DrewADesign 9mo ago
      But just think of all the people that didn’t have to receive a paycheck because of all this efficiency! It’s really incredible how the supposedly unassailable judgement of mass consumer preference consistently leads our society to produce worse shit so we can have more or it, and rewards the chief enshittifiers with mega yachts.
      - kiba 9mo ago
        They have powerful untaxed monopolies in excess of the economic value tech companies themselves generate. At some point, the value of their services come from the people who use their sites.
- bigiain 9mo ago
  > One AI hallucinated and caused the incident I suspect that AI was prompted to create the image, not that this was an incidental "hallucination". Cynical-me suspects this may have been a trial run by malicious actors experimenting with disrupting critical infrastructure.
  - permonst 9mo ago
    There is precedent for state actors putting a lot of effort into a hoax like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbian_Chemicals_Plant_explosion_hoax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbian_Chemicals_Plant_expl...

vkou 9mo ago

It's not, but when you have 30 minutes to ship a story...

deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]

Blackthorn 9mo ago

Yeah, talk about begging the question. Yikes.

informal007 9mo ago

This is the fast way they can try, but it shouldn't be the most trustworthy way and shouldn't be in report.

skissane 9mo ago

Someone I know is a high school English teacher (being vague because I don’t want to cause them trouble or embarrassment). They told me they were asking ChatGPT to tell them whether their students’ creative writing assignments were AI-generated or not-I pointed out that LLMs such as ChatGPT have poor reliability at this; classifier models trained specifically for this task perform somewhat better, yet also have their limitations. In any event, if the student has access to whatever model the teacher is using to test for AI-generation (or even comparable models), they can always respond adversarially by tinkering with an AI-generated story until it is no longer classified as AI-generated

techjamie 9mo ago
Reminds me of a Reddit story that made the rounds about a professor asking ChatGPT if it wrote papers, to which it frequently responded afirmatively. He sent an angry email about it, and a student responded by showing a response from ChatGPT claiming it wrote his email.
- gblargg 9mo ago
  > student responded by showing a response from ChatGPT claiming it wrote his email Which is actually fine. Students need to do their own homework. A teacher can delegate writing emails.
  - recursive 9mo ago
    But if he didn't delegate, and it said he did, that would suggest that the methodology doesn't really work.
  - arcanemachiner 9mo ago
    I believe you just got whooshed.
    - MengerSponge 9mo ago
      A person arguing in favor of LLM use failed to comprehend the context or argument? Unpossible!

maxlin 9mo ago

Yeah that hardly talks of the "journalist" being good at their job. At worst they asked a biased question like "has this photo been AI generated and if then how" or worse. People tend to think that AI is like a specific kind of human which knows other AI things better. But we should expect better from people that do writing as their job.

Davidzheng 9mo ago

If it's nano banana you can give it to Gemini bc it has artifacts

RestartKernel 9mo ago
All these tool integrations are making it increasingly difficult to explain to non-tech people what these chatbots are capable of. Even more so as multi-modality improves (at some point image generation went from a distinct tool to arguably an inherent part the the models).

jameslk 9mo ago

ChatGPT: This looks like AI. I can tell from some of the pixels and from seeing quite a bit of training data in my time.

deleted 9mo ago

[deleted]

hexbin010 9mo ago

Do you not think even BBC "journalists" are suffering from immense pressures to use AI for efficiency? It's everywhere

Nasrudith 9mo ago

Yeah, it is frankly just plain bad epistemology to expect an AI chatbot to have answers on a matter such as this. Like trying to get this week's lotto numbers by seeking a reading in bible passages and verses. There is no way that the information was encoded within in there as it would violate causality. At best you'd have coincidental collisions only.