A fake photo of an explosion near the Pentagon went viral across Twitter on Monday, and stocks dipped. The incident confirmed what many have said for months: Misinformation is on course to be supercharged as new AI tools for concocting photos get easier to use.
Fixing this problem with technology will be an endless game of whack-a-mole. It’s certainly worth trying to track image provenance, as Adobe Inc. is doing with its Content Authenticity Initiative. But as the saying goes, a lie can travel around the world and back again while the truth is still lacing up its boots. In a world where more content than ever is being generated artificially, we’ll all need to become more skeptical about what we see online — especially in the run-up to a US presidential election next year.
The Pentagon “photo” became particularly messy because of Twitter’s poor excuse for a verification system. Elon Musk revamped the site’s blue ticks so that they would no longer be monopolized by “elites” like press and celebrities, and so more people could become verified and have a louder voice for a flat fee. Unfortunately, his system has become a target for imitators, like the paid account BloombergFeed, which was one of several verified accounts that posted the Pentagon photo before getting suspended Monday morning.
