Destination unknown

Australia Broadcast Center

12-05-2025

And now we travel from Rome to this picturesque South American laneway:
BACK WHERE THEY BELONG
No-go nations that are now must-see destinations
- The Age Traveller, 3 May, 2025
Yes, the cover of The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald's liftout for jetsetters transported readers to this colourful backstreet in Colombia's port city of Cartagena in this exquisite photograph of the city's 16th century cathedral, but look at it long enough and you become oddly nauseous because that tree seems to have sprouted directly from the masonry and is that balcony even attached to the eaves? And someone's taken a bite out of the pot-plant.
So we traced the image to its source on this Adobe stock image gallery and the wider version comes complete with a floating wall-lamp, ghostly balconies and more of that drifting greenery.
Yes, as you've already guessed, we discovered this is not a photograph at all but the work of a machine's imagination.
The image was posted by an account dubbed 'Arnada', one of many turning famous destinations into AI slop. Like Buenos Aires in Argentina, a strikingly similar street in Lima, Peru and this somewhat disturbing Hindu temple supposedly in southern India, all of which come with a disclaimer:
Editorial use must not be misleading or deceptive.
- Adobe Stock
We asked Nine about its use of the fake AI image, prompting a real human being to type up these corrections which appeared in both mastheads on Saturday.
A spokesperson told us:
… Unfortunately, on this occasion an AI image supplied by a third-party provider was published in the Traveller section. As soon as we became aware, the image was promptly removed from the online version…
- Email, Nine Spokesperson, 10 May, 2025
Nine is not alone however in misleading its readers about what the real world actually looks like, just take a look at this apocalyptic image used by the ABC to illustrate stories about climate change on no fewer than four occasions since 2022.
These birds wheeling above a dying planet were not AI-generated, but were nevertheless fake, and came from a similar stock library this time owned by Getty Images, where journalists can select their favourite flavour of climate hellscape with those same smokestacks in a cornfield or in the midst of precious wetlands or even plumb in the middle of a working mine all of which are all the work of a very creative Baran Özdemir who says his openly declared composite images are not intended to blow smoke but rather to:
… convey conceptual and symbolic messages …
- Email, Baran Özdemir, Photographer, 7 May, 2025
And if publishers choose to use these creations … well then:
… it is their editorial responsibility to clarify whether the image is illustrative or documentary …
- Email, Baran Özdemir, Photographer ,7 May, 2025
Which of course, the ABC had failed to do.
After our inquiries it removed Ozdemir's composite image from its online stories explaining it had not properly labelled the image when it was first downloaded.
A spokesperson added:
We can't commission original photography for the dozens of images required each day ... We've been alerting staff to be vigilant to changes in the images available via agencies and the way they're presented.
- Email, ABC Spokesperson, 9 May, 2025
This vigilance about what is real and what is not has been on the slide in overseas publications too.
Can you spot what's wrong with this image from the Boston Globe late last year?
Yes, that's right our forearms do not contain a third bone, not yet anyway, which the Globe later acknowledged in this correction.
And do you need more than a single guess as to why publications might prefer concocted landscapes or anatomically imperfect X-rays?
No, of course you don't.
They look cheap because they are, and as they bloom across the news so the value of real photography withers as Matthew Abbott, the 2020 Nikon-Walkley Press Photographer of the Year, explained:
… AI-generated images are often sensational and hyper-polished in ways genuine documentary photographs rarely are. I worry that as audiences consume more of these constructed images, the emotional impact of actual photographs will fade.
- Email, Matthew Abbott, Documentary Photographer, 11 May, 2025
Dean Lewins, who won the same honour two years earlier, told us the use of AI:
… undermines the trust and authenticity of the masthead or news organisation. The three main pillars of journalism are truth, accuracy and objectivity. An AI generated image, just like AI generated text, breaks all three rules.)
- Email, Dean Lewins, Chief Photographer, AAP, 9 May, 2025
News Corp is also snubbing us mere mortals and turning to machines for imagery almost every week like this traffic jam from hell, or a train going nowhere, or this renewables wasteland which it should be said was all declared to be the work of Chat GPT.
The company's AI policy says any use of AI needs a final tick from an editor, who must:
… apply the same editorial rigour and standards to how we use all information … sourced from AI technology …
- Email, News Corp Spokesperson, 9 May, 2025
Nine's AI policy for its newspapers says:
…there must always be a human between any AI tool and our audience… AI will not be used to generate photo-realistic images or illustrations for publication, except in cases where the AI-generated nature of the image is the point of the story.
As for Aunty, it's in the final stages of developing a new strategy for the use of AI. Presently its policies say any significant use of machine learning must be approved by senior staff disclosed to audiences and must not mislead.
Loathe it, or loathe it, it's clear that photoshopped fakes and dystopian AI images are now rooting themselves into the industry of journalism and the impact may be as profound as it is disturbing. If newspaper and website editors don't fight for the proper and meaningful discrimination between what is real and what is not, they will be betraying not just their readers and not just their industry but the very notion of the truth.