Dec 19, 2023 23:00:00

Facebook is already filled with plagiarized posts created by image-generating AI.

AI has been a headache for social media for some time, as in 2019 it was

reported that Facebook announced that it had removed fake accounts whose profile images were synthesized using AI, but until now it has been difficult to spot AI images. It wasn't difficult. However, with the development of generative AI that can output large amounts of realistic images, the once predicted future in which ``the garbage content mass-produced by generative AI will overwhelm the efforts of real humans'' has already become a reality. 404 Media, an IT news site, reported that.

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 is standing on one knee with a sawmill in the background, proudly displaying a beautifully carved wooden dog with the caption: 'I made it with my own hands!' It is written.


This post has received over 1 million likes and 39,000 comments at the time of article creation, and has been shared 17,000 times. The poster also posted a link to a site that sells pet supplies in the comment section.

There are dozens of similar posts on Facebook. The attached photos are all slightly different, and the positional relationship between the man and the sculpture, the appearance of the man, the breed of dog that is the sculpture, etc. are all different, and in some cases the man is a woman. .

That's not surprising, according to 404 Media, all of the above images are plagiarized posts from other people that were processed using generative AI.

The real thing is the photo below posted by UK-based sculptor Michael Jones. Unfortunately, Jones' original post received 1,475 likes, 142 comments, and was shared 123 times, a far cry from the fake post.


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


These fake images are created by the 'image-to-image (img2img)' generation AI, which generates a similar image based on the input image.

Hany Farid, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who specializes in AI-based disinformation and deepfakes, said, ``With these generative AIs, each time you generate an image, you get a randomly different one. You can set the 'strength' of the image between 0 and 1. 0 means ignore the original image, 1 means output something exactly like the original image.''

According to writer Brian Penny, who provided information about Mr. Jones' sculpture to 404 Media, there are countless spam posts made by generated AI on Facebook.

Mr. Penny said that AI enthusiasts and conspiracy theorists are calmly taking over Facebook with plagiarism generated by generated AI, and unsuspecting elderly people are commenting on the posts saying ``Wow, that's amazing'' while clicking ``Like'' and ``Share.'' He pointed out that it has become commonplace to do so.

At the time of writing, the abuse of generated AI was only a problem of spam by businesses aiming for profit, but experts are warning that it could develop into a big problem in the future. Mr. Farid said, ``Images generated by image generation AI are becoming more and more realistic day by day.In the future, the ability to distinguish between reality and fiction will be essential.If you think that a photo is real every time you see it, then... This will have consequences that cannot be treated as a joke.'

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