AI-made animal images are making people doubt real rescue posts

In short: AI-generated animal photos and videos are flooding social media, and it is getting harder for people to trust what they see.

What's going on

Animal pictures and videos are a big part of what many people enjoy online. But more of that content is now made with AI, including deepfakes, which are realistic looking fakes (like a movie special effect, but made on a laptop). As a result, viewers are starting to question even real posts from pet owners, rescue groups, and wildlife organizations.

WIRED shared the story of Mibbby Butler, who received a photo from a stranger claiming her missing cat, Brooklyn, had been found. The person asked for money up front to get the cat back. Butler noticed the photo looked copied from her missing poster, and some background text was garbled, a common clue that an image was made by AI. She did not pay, and Brooklyn is still missing.

The same trust problem is hitting animal nonprofits. We Animals, a group that publishes work from photojournalists documenting animal welfare issues, says viewers now sometimes accuse its real footage of being AI-made. The group says it bans photographers from using AI, and it expects it may need to share behind-the-scenes proof and use tools that attach “provenance” information, meaning a record of where a photo came from and how it was edited (like a receipt for an image).

What to watch

New rules in places like California and the EU require popular AI image tools to add hidden tags to AI-made content, and platforms are supposed to label it. Some chatbots can also check whether an image was generated by their own systems, but that still takes extra effort. A key question is whether these checks will become automatic in phones, messaging apps, and browsers, so people get warnings before they fall for scams or share fake rescue stories.

Source: Wired