by Maleeha Sofi
SRINAGAR: For a start, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has started getting popular for bad reasons. The technology’s abuse in morphing photographs has taken centre stage indicating the mess it is expected to lead to in the coming days.
Reality of the Wrestlers. It’s such a shame to see them defame their Country. pic.twitter.com/Diow2nrDwO
— TRINA SARKER🇮🇳 Modi Bhakt.A proud Indian. (@TRINASARKER8) May 28, 2023
Though AI has started impacting the world in thousands of positive ways, the technology’s flip side has started showing up. AI is being used to modify real-time photographs to make them unreal and mislead people. Tragically, people are unable to distinguish these fake photographs from the real ones.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has come up as a breaking development in the technological world. It claims to assist humans in every job be it writing scripts, creating presentations or studying for an exam. The chatbots powered by AI answer any query within seconds.
AI is not a new concept. The first formal AI programme is reported to have been created in 1956, but several developments were made before it and are still in progress. The first chatbot was developed by Joseph Weizenbaum in the 1960s. AI came into the limelight with the development of ChatGPT by Open AI in November 2022. It was followed by a sequence of several other chatbots such as Google BARD, The New Bing, Jasper, You Chat etc.
The morphing of photos was witnessed previously, but AI has given it a new dimension without any human interference except the input. At a time when it takes seconds for a photograph or video to get viral, it has raised concerns all over the globe.
There were photos of Donald Trump’s arrest, Narendra Modi in police uniform, Indian celebrities as aged people, and Hollywood actors as Hindu priests recently circulated on social media. It would have been acceptable until it was confined to harmless entertainment. Recently pictures of protesting Indian wrestlers with a smile while being arrested went viral on social media. It outraged the people as they found it hypocritical to protest on roads and then smile and be happy on their arrest.
IT Cell वाले ये झूठी तस्वीर फैला रहे हैं। हम ये साफ़ कर देते हैं की जो भी ये फ़र्ज़ी तस्वीर पोस्ट करेगा उसके ख़िलाफ़ शिकायत दर्ज की जाएगी। #WrestlersProtest pic.twitter.com/a0MngT1kUa
— Bajrang Punia 🇮🇳 (@BajrangPunia) May 28, 2023
While these photos spread like wildfire all over the internet, it was discovered that these photographs were AI-generated. The actual photo has completely different expressions depicting totally opposite situation and emotion. Many fact-checkers and news organisations shared the real photo. One of the protesting wrestlers Bajrang Punia tweeted the real and fake photo quoting, “IT Cell is spreading the fake photo. We want to clarify that we will lodge a complaint against whoever shares the morphed photo.”
Geoffrey Hinton, known as the ‘godfather’ of Artificial Intelligence resigned from Google warning about the growing dangers from the developments on the ground. In a New York Times statement, he said he regretted his work.
Artificial Intelligence has already put a question mark on the survival of quality education, work, and sustenance of jobs. Now, the creation of morphed photos does not appear to stop and get only worse in the near future. It is misleading to common people and it has put the credibility in danger.
Many experts believe that there is always some inconsistency in AI-generated pictures. People should be sceptical before believing in a picture completely and look carefully if there is a sign that it is not real. “We as human species sort of grow up thinking that seeing is believing,” Wael AbdAlmageed, a research associate professor of computer science at the University of Southern California puts it in the Scientific American magazine. “That’s not true anymore. Seeing is not believing anymore.”
