As of: February 28, 2024, 2:00 p.m
By: Raffael Scherer
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Really photographed – or generated by AI?
Fake news hunter Andre Wolf during his lecture.
© Raffel Scherer
Many fraudsters are up to mischief on the Internet.
This is how you can protect yourself:
Erding – Recently, religion teacher Dagmar von Aschen discussed the topic of fake news with her 9th grade class: “Just because a message comes from my friend, that doesn’t mean it’s true and it’s not always entirely kosher,” she tried to tell the girls to teach.
Her husband, the Evangelical pastor Henning von Aschen, also reports that his son has already diagnosed him with a “need to catch up” on the subject.
That's why the pastor's family gathered in the Protestant parish hall of the Redeemer Church in Erding to listen to the lecture by fake news hunter Andre Wolf.
He is a full-time member of Mimikama, an association that raises awareness about internet abuse, and educates people in Austria and Germany about how to use social media responsibly.
“I'm not talking about social networks because I think the term 'social' is translated incorrectly at this point,” he explains.
After all, the word “social” in German is usually associated with “charitable, helpful, nice” organizations.
“Social media” are social, but commercial networks with a profit orientation through advertising and data sales.
And, in contrast to media such as newspapers, radio or television, anyone can publish content in real time.
That's why it's all the more important there to always examine posts with a critical eye - even more so in election years and when it comes to war topics.
An important tool here is the question of the origin of the posted photo.
This involves image analysis, known as geoguessing.
“I look at a picture like this and extract all the information.”
From buildings or streets in the background to the season, recognizable by the weather and trees, to the lettering on posters or street names, you can research where and when the original photographer of the picture was standing.
This can sometimes be in the USA instead of in Germany as stated, Wolf showed using an example of a photo of a Washington bus shelter with a fake Merkel poster.
Another tool is reverse image search.
Search engines such as Google Lens can be used to find out when an image first appeared online.
When viewing similar images, you will often find the original, unedited and uncropped photo, often with a completely different context.
When one of the 15 or so visitors asked that this was “extremely time-consuming,” Wolf explained: “Yes, time is important. We have to slow down because we consume extremely quickly.” Of course, you can’t privately research every single piece of content , but it's worth taking a second look, especially when it comes to reports that quickly appear suspicious.
But if no similar images can be found during the image research, they are most likely photos generated by artificial intelligence (AI).
Because they cannot produce an image exactly the same several times, explains Wolf.
In order to unmask AI images, it is worth also looking at the environment around the main event.
If images are “too perfect”, whether in terms of the structure of the buildings, too close to the action in detail, or if all the people behave very similarly without one person looking distractedly neutrally in a different direction, this speaks for AI.
The arms and legs in particular are worth taking a closer look at, as the generators will continue to struggle with the correct representation in the near future.
Religion teacher von Aschen has definitely learned a lot, she said after the hour-and-a-half lecture as the chairs around her were pushed back together.
“I will take a closer look at pictures in the future,” she concluded.
And she can certainly pass on some of what she just heard to her students.
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