From obvious AI slop to photo-realistic imagery, millions of people use artificial intelligence software to create digital images on a daily basis. Such platforms have built-in guardrails, but it turns out that even innocent-looking creations can cause serious harm. Case in point, the seemingly harmless photo of a wolf walking the streets of a city.
Let’s be honest, one could use AI programs to create worse images than a lone wolf walking through the streets, but a 40-year-old South Korean man risks spending the next five years of his life in prison and paying a fine of $6,700 for doing just that.
Using a text prompt to create a photo-realistic image of a wolf walking through your home city and then posting it online doesn’t sound like a crime, but what if there was an actual wolf on the loose?
On April 8th, South Korean media reported that a wolf named Neukgu had escaped from the Daejeon Zoo, and some even posted a photo of the canine spotted on the streets of Daejeon. It looked real, but that photo had been created by AI, based on a prompt.
South Korean authorities explained that “a single AI-manipulated image delayed the wolf’s capture by up to nine days” and that “the prolonged deployment of police and firefighters caused significant disruptions to their primary duty of protecting the public.”
Worried that Neukgu could be prowling the streets of the city, authorities in Daejeon decided to close down primary school and send in special emergency teams to ensure the safety of the local populace. By the time someone realized the photo that had kick-started this massive operation was fake, the damage had already been done.
Busy searching through the city, the police eventually found Neukgu on the outskirts of Daejeon, much later than they would have had they not been deceived by that one AI-generated photo.
After being tracked down, the 40-year-old man responsible for creating the AI photo of a wolf in Daejeon casually said that he had done it “for fun”. He now risks spending 5 years in prison for it.
