No, not really. There was a real wolf and the person dusturbed the operation.
"South Korean police have arrested a man for sharing an AI-generated image that misled authorities who were searching for a wolf that had broken out of a zoo in Daejeon city.
The 40-year-old unnamed man is accused of disrupting the search by creating and distributing a fake photo purporting to show Neukgu, the wolf, trotting down a road intersection"
But there are real wolves when shepherding too. That’s why crying wolf has any power.
To cry wolf is to say there’s a wolf here when it’s actually located elsewhere. The AI photo said there was a wolf at a certain intersection when it was actually located elsewhere.
In fact crying wolf is doubly appropriate because it means disturbing an operation looking for a wolf.
The biggest difference now is wolf is actually sought to protect him¹ from the crowd of the super-predators in town, so they can "give him a calm environment for recovery".
¹ Following pronoun variant used in the fine article here.
The fable was always relevant, afaic it is still a part of the curriculums. It's also a nice illustration of how LLMs screw up everything they touch - and please don't serve me the old "guns don't kill people - people kill people" argument over this.
It sounds like he didn’t actually file a false police report. They don’t even say they asked him whether it’s true. It seems the police just read a post by a random person on the internet, assumed it’s true, then arrested him when it wasn’t. The article is devastatingly light on info, though, so I can’t be sure.
Yeah, we can't actually tell whether the image was posted with the poster going 'hey, @SouthKoreanPolice, wolf is here!', or whether it was xit out without any comment or context, or whether it was in response to a friend who lives in the vicinity of the location in the picture wondering where the wolf was,...
I don't care enough to bother finding out, but seems like the BBC could have done some more journalism, if they were so inclined.
Isn't the technology that enabled the deception noteworthy? Presumably this person wouldn't have been able to do this before AI.
Hypothetically, if a hacking tool was released that let non-technical people hack into sensitive databases, and then a journalist wrote the headline "local man hacks IRS", without any mention of the tool, wouldn't that be a bit irresponsible, to purposely leave that information out?
To make a shooped image good enough to fool the police into think they're looking at a completely real picture, you'd think it would take a reasonable amount of skill. If nothing else you need an exact match picture in terms of lighting and perspective.
The technology used is very much relevant, because the ease of access and easiness of production are likely to have been the biggest contributors. Had they had to open an image editor and spend a few hours to make something convincing, they would’ve been much less likely to do so, assuming this particular person even had the skills, and would have had multiple opportunities to change their mind.
It’s a crime of opportunity¹, one where you have the idea and act on it on a whim. No opportunity, no crime, and the technology provided the opportunity.
Yes, and at the same time we should ask the question: would the intersection between "people who think this is a funny thing to do" and "people with the technical capabilities to actually generate something that misleads police" [1] return a value > 0 before GenAI?
[1] waiting for some example where fool policemen where outsmarted with simple tricks /s
Background image of some local street. Image of a wolf and object selection tool (pre AI era version). Touch up a little and add some filters to drop the quality.
Sure a little bit more involved than the two second AI prompt, but 3 min job for the lulz photoshoppers.
No, it’s not “a little bit more involved”, it’s significantly more involved because it also requires the skills to even know what you’re talking about, the experience of having done it before to be convincing, the inclination to spend the time on it, downloading Photoshop itself, possibly cracking it… There are a lot of steps, most of which most people haven’t done and don’t know how. With generative AI, you just open a website and type a few words.
There are significantly more people able to type a few words into a prompt than people who can use an image editor fast and convincingly and would be inclined to waste their time on this kind of fake.
> Neukgu is part of a programme at O-World to restore the Korean wolf, which once roamed the Korean Peninsula but is now considered extinct in the wild.
I don't understand, shouldn't they have let him go if the idea is that they still roam in the wild? Why forcing it back to a zoo?
Pretty sure if you let only a handful of individuals from an almost-extinct species roam around freely in an uncontrolled environment, chances are pretty high something is going to kill them off before they reproduce, hence why they are almost-extinct.
The zoo provides a controlled environment needed to restore the species.
Maybe it’s because wolves are genetically dogs and will cross breed and the conservation program supposedly needs to increase the numbers of that particular breed and not just wolves/dogs in general?
Those chips need to be scanned from about 3cm away. If you want a locator tag, it needs to carry enough power to broadcast a signal a useful distance. Still, a microchip is handy if you're not sure if it's your tiger you found.
It is, quite frankly, completely wrong that this man was arrested—if anything, by this line of reasoning, it should have been an artist instead—since AI, as we are told, merely makes copies of what hard-working human artists have already created and shared on the internet.
AI is plagiarism—full stop—nothing more, nothing less.
Of course, this point could have been made without sarcasm (and AI tells for parody)—I’m aware—but that would remove a certain… texture from the argument. And where, exactly, is the fun in that?
South Korea has some very specific (and unusually harsh) laws around deepfakes. I was under the impression that it was only about impersonating people, but apparently it’s broader.
“Authorities are investigating him for disrupting government work by deception, an offence that carries up to five years in prison or a maximum fine of 10 million Korean won ($6,700; £5,000)”
Somewhat harsher than the UK at least, where “wasting police time” would only get you six months or around a £2500 fine.
So you are saying authorities should ignore public posts unless they are specifically sent to them?
What if another citizen forwarded the image to the police, not knowing it was AI generated? Should it have been ignored because it was not made by the sender? Should it have been ignored because it was forwarded from a public post?
"disrupting government work by deception" sounds like such a busywork charge here trying to do some heavy lifting. An absolutely tough, rough criminal out here...
There’s something hilariously poetic about a ~2,500 year old fable being relevant today, because of AI.
"South Korean police have arrested a man for sharing an AI-generated image that misled authorities who were searching for a wolf that had broken out of a zoo in Daejeon city.
The 40-year-old unnamed man is accused of disrupting the search by creating and distributing a fake photo purporting to show Neukgu, the wolf, trotting down a road intersection"
To cry wolf is to say there’s a wolf here when it’s actually located elsewhere. The AI photo said there was a wolf at a certain intersection when it was actually located elsewhere.
In fact crying wolf is doubly appropriate because it means disturbing an operation looking for a wolf.
This is misdirection while there is a wolf
Similar but different
That's not pedantic, that's the meaning of the idiom.
¹ Following pronoun variant used in the fine article here.
Did they? The article says it's unclear as to their intent.
> Authorities did not specify if the man had intentionally sent the photo to authorities during their search or simply shared it online.
And you'll be shocked what the kids have been doing with databases and API calls
Willfully diverting limited public service resources, that might potentially be assigned to saving someone's life or health?
Practically a social DoS
I don't care enough to bother finding out, but seems like the BBC could have done some more journalism, if they were so inclined.
The only reason you are seeing this right now is because it has AI in the title.
Hypothetically, if a hacking tool was released that let non-technical people hack into sensitive databases, and then a journalist wrote the headline "local man hacks IRS", without any mention of the tool, wouldn't that be a bit irresponsible, to purposely leave that information out?
Photoshop? I don't think you need much skill.
It’s a crime of opportunity¹, one where you have the idea and act on it on a whim. No opportunity, no crime, and the technology provided the opportunity.
So yes, the technology used matters.
¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_of_opportunity
If Tesla (insert any car manufacturer you hate) ran over a kid I'd like to see the title say it, instead of "Tesla fined for violating traffic laws."
[1] waiting for some example where fool policemen where outsmarted with simple tricks /s
Sure a little bit more involved than the two second AI prompt, but 3 min job for the lulz photoshoppers.
There are significantly more people able to type a few words into a prompt than people who can use an image editor fast and convincingly and would be inclined to waste their time on this kind of fake.
I don't understand, shouldn't they have let him go if the idea is that they still roam in the wild? Why forcing it back to a zoo?
The zoo provides a controlled environment needed to restore the species.
EDIT: typo/word ordering
https://m.wikitree.co.kr/articles/1132213
You could adjust the firmware of a wildlife tag to start transmitting location every 10 minutes when the animal leaves a geo-fence.
AI is plagiarism—full stop—nothing more, nothing less.
Of course, this point could have been made without sarcasm (and AI tells for parody)—I’m aware—but that would remove a certain… texture from the argument. And where, exactly, is the fun in that?
If it helps, imagine the text more as a work of art than an instruction manual. Art matters.
“Authorities are investigating him for disrupting government work by deception, an offence that carries up to five years in prison or a maximum fine of 10 million Korean won ($6,700; £5,000)”
Somewhat harsher than the UK at least, where “wasting police time” would only get you six months or around a £2500 fine.
[1] https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/fir-against-reporter-...
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What if another citizen forwarded the image to the police, not knowing it was AI generated? Should it have been ignored because it was not made by the sender? Should it have been ignored because it was forwarded from a public post?