Dec 19, 2023 23:00:00

Facebook is already filled with rip-off posts created by image-generating AI

AI has long been a social media headache, with

reports in 2019 that Facebook had removed fake accounts that used AI to create profile pictures. Until now, however, detecting AI-generated images has not been difficult. However, with the development of generative AI, which can mass-produce realistic images, the once-predicted future in which 'generative AI mass-produces garbage content that overwhelms the efforts of real people' is already becoming a reality, according to a report by 404 Media, an IT news site.

Facebook Is Being Overrun With Stolen, AI-Generated Images That People Think Are Real
https://www.404media.co/facebook-is-being-overrun-with-stolen-ai-generated-images-that-people-think-are-real/

In the Facebook post below, a man kneels in front of a sawmill and proudly displays an impressive wooden dog carving, captioned, 'I made this with my own hands!'


The post has over 1 million likes, 39,000 comments, and been shared 17,000 times at the time of writing, and the author also included a link to a website selling pet supplies in the comments section.

There are dozens of similar posts on Facebook, each with slightly different photos, showing different positions of the man and the sculpture, different appearances of the man, different breeds of dog, and in some cases, the man is a woman.

That's no surprise, as according to 404 Media, all of the images above are plagiarized versions of other people's posts, edited using generative AI.

The real deal is the photo below, posted by UK-based sculptor Michael Jones. Unfortunately, Jones' original post has received 1,475 likes, 142 comments, and 123 shares, which is nowhere near the fake one.


Jones has posted many of his other works on Facebook, but these photos have become prey to spammers looking to profit from the efforts of artists like Jones. 'Sadly, this is a big problem for me and other sculptors around the world like me, who are losing the recognition they deserve for their work,' Jones told 404 Media.


These fake images are created by an image-to-image (img2img) generative AI that generates a similar image based on an input image.

Hany Farid, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who specializes in AI-based disinformation and deepfakes, explained, 'These generative AIs generate randomly different images each time they generate them. The user can then set the 'strength' of the new image, between 0 and 1. 0 means ignore the original image, and 1 means produce an exact replica.'

According to writer Brian Penny, who provided information about Jones' sculpture to 404 Media, Facebook is home to countless spam posts created by generative AI.

Penny pointed out that it has become commonplace for AI enthusiasts and conspiracy theorists to take over Facebook with plagiarized images created by generative AI, and for unknowing elderly people to comment on the posts with comments like 'wow, wow' and click 'like' or 'share.'

At the time of writing, the misuse of generative AI is limited to spam generated by businesses seeking profits, but experts warn that it could develop into a major problem in the future. 'Images generated by image-generating AI are becoming more and more realistic,' Farid said. 'The ability to distinguish between reality and fiction will be essential in the future, and if you start to think a photo is real every time you see it, it will lead to serious consequences.'

Penny also said, 'I don't know what the world will be like in 20 years, but I'm never going to believe anything someone shows me on the Internet again.'