DON’T BELIEVE WHAT YOU SEE

From images of the pope wearing a white puffed jacket worth thousands of dollars, to reviving dead celebrities into wild images, Ai has begun to become the king of the internet. But not only that, it has become more and more prominent in workspaces, and pictures becoming more realistic. Thus, fake news has begun to become more prominent than ever. Ai is now being used in news and journalism. In an article made by “Generating Change made by Journalism AI”, they ran a global survey about what news organizations and how many of them are using artificial intelligence. A reported 85% have stated that they have, 14% being unclear, and 1% stating they have not, and with 80% of them stating that they believe news is going to have more applications of AI in the future.

“The instant we start messing with photographs themselves, it’s no longer true because news is about documentary photography. It should be realistic to what we actually experienced. We shouldn’t manipulate or generate photographs more than we need to make them fit and look pretty,” yearbook teacher Micheal Witman, said about his opinion on Ai photography.

But with these kinds of changes happening amongst the news, it’s beginning to become harder and harder to tell what’s real and what’s fake. In a post on reddit created by Pablo Xavier, a 31 year old construction worker, he had created a fake image of the pope in a Valencia puffer coat. The image had been taken through the internet, sailing across the seas of social media like Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. It was created in Mid Journey, and it’s not the first time these images have been created to make people either laugh, post about, or save for their own personal use.

Because of this manipulation with Ai, internet freedom is beginning to be stripped away. In the article, The Repressive Power of Artificial Intelligence, written by Allie Funk, Adrian Shabaz, and Kain Vesteinnson, it was revealed that 29 countries’ conditions for human rights on the internet had deteriorated.

For the past nine years, China continues to have worse internet human rights conditions. Myanmar is coming close to surpassing it, with Iran having the largest decline and the Philippines being a close second, along with Belarus, Costa Rica, and Nicaragua. On top of this, 41 countries have begun to censor topics like politics, religion, or social activities that revolve around content.

I’m willing to bet all of my money that Ai photography will never overtake real photography. It takes a creative mind to give a prompt for photos. You can’t have AI at your wedding, you can’t have AI at your birthday party. You need a person[/pullquote]

“I’m willing to bet all of my money that Ai photography will never overtake real photography. It takes a creative mind to give a prompt for photos. You can’t have AI at your wedding, you can’t have AI at your birthday party. You need a person,” student photographer Rogelio Molina said about Ai taking over photography.

However, some news rooms and photographers are already using Ai in more helpful ways rather than harmful ones. In an article called “How Will Artificial Intelligence Change Journalism” produced by Intelligencer and written by John Herrman, they had listed some of the ways the Ai is already helping the news workplace.

“Google’s “Genesis” story-generation tool represents a fuller expression of this approach. As a piece of software that will attempt to synthesize chosen and at least theoretically novel information into a news-like form, it promises to replace or streamline an important step in the production of stories.”

AI as a source of photography and news is a messy idea, one of which with multiple contradictions of assistance and take over. However, if taken with time and patience, it could serve as a useful tool, but still with its many dangers.