There was Zens’ “hacked police database” of pictures of Uyghurs supposedly being detained which was widely reported on for a minute, BBC and the intercept at a cursory Google search, and I’m sure others too.

Some of these are such obvious AI generated fakes I don’t know how they got through. At the least the numbers are padded.

Last time this came up on here there were some reasonable objections, such as “not everyone will look like Beyonce” which is true, but out of 2800 people how many will have such incredibly severe scoliosis as many of these images seem to show? And then there are a few where it even does the half glasses half no glasses thing, or a bit of hair texture detached from the person’s head entirely, or the one undeniable fake where the older guy’s head comes out of his chest and there is an impossible shadow pattern between his neck and shirt collar.

Edit: I tracked that one down.

Take a good long look at that guy’s neck and explain to me how so many mainstream news networks reported on this shit for months uncritically.

everything online is already fake, even the real stuff

funny ai generated images

Remember when everyone was freaking out about photographic fakery?

Me neither. The fact that this technology’s existence is widely-known just means you now can’t implicitly trust video footage. Not that you ever could. Same deal with that AI voice mimicry shit. People know it exists, they know that it’s possible to fake things and if they’re wise they’ll bear it in mind.

We got bored and moved on to the next manmade horror beyond our comprehension. It’s still a potential problem, but eventually people get numb to it and move on to focus on the next thing in the unending avalanche of nightmarish horror that is life in the 21st century. Plus, with Q-anon, it probably doesn’t seem as impressive that you can make a video of Barack Obama confessing to murder when millions of people publicly believe in the wildest shit.

Like did they need deepfakes to do a complete 180 on Ukraine from dysfunctional Nazi infested corrupt shithole to shining bastion of democracy fighting a totally unprovoked defensive war against bolshevofascist oppression?