AI-altered images on birdwatching forums putting research at risk
www.theguardian.com
Experts warn increase in enhanced photos on birding platforms creating fake sightings, threatening credibility of tool used by scientists

researchers warned that hundreds of fake images have already been discovered on popular databases for recording species. They said that the true scale of the issue is unknown – as many could go undetected – and could contaminate records collected by the public.

Biological recording citizen-science platforms receive millions of images, sounds and video; these data increasingly underpin our knowledge about where species occur in space and time and how they behave. However, their utility may be compromised if databases become appreciably contaminated by media produced by generative text-to-image machine-learning models, and potentially lead to spurious ecological inferences.

Humanity’s knowledge is being destroyed. doggirl-gloom Guard your pre-2020 datasets I guess.

  • KuroXppi [they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    32·
    15 days ago

    Yep, and the modern phones that people use to take of species with low-quality, but recognisable details are AI upscaled, which can remove those distinctive features. So even people attempting legitimate citizen science can be throwing off the data pool

    (Think of using your phone’s camera zoom to photograph a bug on a leaf, or a tiny orchid, and it’s slightly blurry because of the zoom or movement, then your phone says oh, we’ve seen that before we’ll fill in the gaps, smoothing over what could have otherwise been distinguishing features)

    • Letztertod [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      8·
      15 days ago

      I agree which could have been avoided if smartphone weren’t shipped as dslr replacements and even they at least capture something real. Ai generation is a complete divorce from reality. That’s why I think we need to down scale smartphones and make camera another part of regular life for photography lovers because it is good that people want to do citizen science but they should be aware of problems and they won’t be solved so long as these structures are in place.