AI-Generated Fake Images Nearly As Common As Text-Altered Ones: Google Researchers

According to researchers at Google, fake images generated by artificial intelligence have proliferated so rapidly that they are now nearly as common as those altered by text or traditional editing tools like Photoshop.

In a paper published online this month, researchers examined misinformation trends by analysing nearly 136,000 fact-checks from 1995 to November 2023, with most of these fact-checks being published after 2016.

They discovered that AI contributed to very little image-based misinformation until the spring of 2023, which coincided with the viral spread of fake photos depicting Pope Francis in a puffer coat.

The researchers discovered that approximately 80% of fact-checked misinformation involves media such as images and videos, with videos increasingly dominating these claims since 2022.

The study also found that despite the presence of AI, real images paired with false claims about their context or implication continue to spread without the need for AI or photo-editing.

“While AI-generated images did not cause content manipulations to overtake context manipulations, our data collection ended in late 2023 and this may have changed since,” the researchers wrote.