How AI-generated images fueled misinformation about missing children in AustraliaPublished at 11:24 BST
thomas copland
BBC Verify Live Journalist
South Australian police have scaled back the search for a four-year-old boy named Gus Lamont who went missing on Saturday, September 27th.
Despite extensive coverage of the incident by Australian media, AI-generated misinformation has been circulating on social media this week.
One AI-generated image appeared to show a man loading “gas” into his car. It had a label on it that said, “Is this a kidnapping case?”
BBC Verify confirmed the image was not genuine and South Australian Police said it was appealing to local media to check with reliable sources to confirm the accuracy of the information.
“Police urge people to exercise caution when using artificial intelligence in their internet searches and recommend cross-referencing information with reliable sources.”
Police said the search had now transitioned to a “recovery operation”, adding: “There is little hope of finding Gus alive.”
How do we know it was generated by AI?
A Facebook account called “Celebrity Today'' shared the photo to its 815,000 followers, which received about 5,000 reactions and more than 2,500 shares.
I sent selected images from the account to Michael Wooldridge, a professor of artificial intelligence at Oxford University, who pointed out the unnatural hands and limbs.
The fake image of the boy at the top of this post shows the man's index finger extended, while the photo of the woman holding the real AI-generated photo of the gas (see below) shows only three fingers on his left hand.
We also found that many of the posts shared by Celebrity Today contained a mix of real photos and AI-generated images.
We'll be sharing more information soon about what we've learned about Facebook accounts and the fake news sites behind this AI misinformation.
