When 76,000 students in New South Wales opened the English papers as part of their final HSC examinations on Tuesday, there was one inclusion that drew bemusement and bewilderment from some in the cohort.
“Did anyone else notice the AI generated image for text 6?” asked one student in a video posted to TikTok later that afternoon.
Some students who took the exam for both English Standard and English Advanced subjects believed that one of the texts included in both subjects’ papers was an image generated using AI.
An image, which was labelled as “Photograph”, was a text that students were asked to compare to a passage of writing. It appears to depict a desk with a laptop, two phones, a cup of coffee, a bag and intertwined charging cords, all overlooking a stunning body of water on a sunny day.
While it’s not possible to be sure, the image includes signs that suggest that the image is not a normal photograph and may be artificially generated. Some of these include inconsistent scale between objects, conflicting shadows, mutated features like the laptop’s keyboard and the mug’s handle, and cords that go nowhere or into objects like the mug.
NSW’s HSC exam body, the NSW Education Standards Authority, did not respond to a request for comment on the record. But Crikey understands that the image was sourced from a Medium blog post entitled “The power of digital detox: Unlocking productivity through switching off” from user Florian Schroeder.
The blog post does not provide any information about the image, but many of the other posts from the same user also appear to use AI-generated images.
What’s more, it’s not clear that this “Florian Schroeder” even exists. His blog, which covers topics like AI, psychology, cryptocurrency, self-improvement and tips for how to treat insect bites with an onion, contains scant biographical details.
The blog links to a Twitter account with 24 followers, which lists him as the co-founder of the blog “AI Rockstars”. His AI Rockstars bio — which calls him “Florian Schröder” — claims that he is an online marketer and links to a now-deleted LinkedIn. The same, filtered image of “Florian” is used across all these profiles. It appears to be an edited image of a real German media and theatre personality Florian Schroeder, who is otherwise unrelated to this project.
Shroeder (the artist) did not respond to a request for comment. Nor did the other listed co-founder of AI Rockstars, Ralf Schukay, who appears to be a real person.
Crikey understands that authors and artists whose work is included in HSC exam papers are only contacted by NESA after the exam. There is a carve-out under the Copyright Act that allows the use of texts without permission for inclusion in an examination.
As for whether students’ results will be influenced by whether they were able to identify that the “photograph” was likely an image generated by a person who might not exist? Crikey also understands that the only thing that is considered when marking a student is how the image was used as a stimulus.
Even still, some students did not appreciate its inclusion.
“I’m actually so mad they expected us to analyse AI slop and treat it seriously,” one TikTok comment read.
