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CBC
14-03-2025
- CBC
As AI images flood the internet, can these tools help you tell what's real?
AI image detectors promise to help cut through the flood of online content to help determine what's real and what's not — but can you rely on them to get it right? Many people now regularly turn to AI detectors to help determine if viral images are AI-generated. And as people increasingly become skeptical of even real images, those tools are in greater demand. CBC News tested five commonly-recommended free AI image detectors to see if they were accurately able to estimate whether an image was real or AI-generated. These included: AI or Not, Illuminarty, Hive Moderation, Is it AI? and a tool hosted on the open source machine learning platform Hugging Face. While many of these AI detector services have a free tier, some have pricing plans that can cost hundreds of dollars each year. The CBC's visual investigations unit ran three photos through each detector twice. The images tested include a real photo of a CBC hallway lined with lockers, a similar-looking AI-generated image, and a lower resolution, compressed version of the AI-generated image that was posted to the social media platform X. Do AI image detectors work? We tested 5 19 hours ago Duration 2:44 AI image detectors are growing in popularity as a way to determine whether an image or video shared online is real or not. CBC News' Visual Investigations team tested some of the most popular free tools online to see how effective they are — and whether you should rely on them. In the first test, AI or Not and Hive accurately labelled all three images. Illuminarty and Is it AI? got all three wrong. The detector hosted on Hugging Face accurately labelled the AI-generated images, but thought the real image was fake. In the second test, the results were the same, except this time Is it AI? labelled the real image correctly, but still got the AI-generated images wrong. "It really does depend on which system you're looking at," said Ben Y. Zhao, a computer science professor at the University of Chicago. Tests produced mixed results CBC News reached out to all five AI detector companies for comment. The CEOs of AI or Not and Hive both said their AI detectors are searching for patterns invisible to the naked eye. "While some AI-generated images may be easier to identify by common errors — like extra fingers on someone's hand, unrealistic reflections and shadows, or the mismatched scale of objects — the sophistication of AI-generated imagery is moving beyond the threshold of human detection," said Hive CEO Kevin Guo in a statement. AI or Not CEO Anatoly Kvitnitsky says their tool looks for "pixel-level patterns of content." The creator of the AI detector on Hugging Face, developer Colby Brown, says AI detection is still worth pursuing, even if it gets some images wrong. "User caution is needed," Brown said in a statement. "Individual images can fool such detectors even if they have reasonable accuracy on a larger sample (or feed) of images." The team at Is It AI? said in a statement that the test CBC News performed highlights "the ongoing challenge that AI image detectors face" as the technology develops. They also said that their tool "covers a wide range of domains and typically requires a larger and more diverse dataset to assess accuracy comprehensively." As AI image generators are continuously improving, so are detectors. Is It AI? said the company will soon release a new detection tool with "substantial improvements" in accuracy. Brown also said that he may develop a new and more advanced tool. Illuminarty didn't respond to CBC's requests for comment. WATCH | Investigating the claim AI was used to boost crowd size at Carney event: How we debunked this Carney AI claim 16 days ago Duration 1:51 Zhao says some AI detectors are better than others. "Some of them are trained on millions of images that allow them to do a better job with discerning the differences," he said. He noted that bad actors can even use AI image detectors to iterate and fine-tune fake images that would then be labelled as real. "I think the real danger is really to a lot of the folks who are not in a situation where they expect" to be targetted by AI-generated fakes, Zhao said, noting these are usually people who aren't as familiar with technology. "They're going to be easier targets for scammers and phishing scams and different kinds of things." Zhao says that old tricks for detecting AI images are becoming less reliable. Famously, early iterations of AI image generators had trouble mimicking human hands, but he says that's not the case anymore. Still, AI image generators don't get everything right, and a trained eye can often pick out details that clearly indicate AI was used. The AI image CBC News used in the test can be identified as fake with the naked eye. The lockers in the hallway have locks that are warped and blurred, for example. The overhead lights have no fixtures, a panel on the ceiling has a line running through it, and there appear to be far too many lockers for the amount of space shown in the photo. Zhao says that when people are trying to tell the difference between a real photo and an AI-generated image, thinking through the details is important. "Does it make sense for the button to be placed in this way? Does it make sense for the hair to blend in with the turtle neck that way? Those kinds of smaller details are really still tricky for models to get right," Zhao said. Methodology: During testing, CBC News sought to mimic the experience of a member of the general public. We chose five free popular online AI image detectors. We chose five free popular online AI image detectors by tallying the number of recommendations from lists featured on the first five pages of Google search results and chose the top five of those services. Three images were tested: a real photo taken by CBC reporters, an AI-generated image and a compressed version of the same AI image that was posted to X and downloaded again. The five detectors were then scored as correct or incorrect based on whether they accurately assessed whether the images were more likely created by a human or AI. The test was run twice. The AI photo was generated from Google's Gemini AI with the prompt: "Create an image of a hallway with blue lockers filling half of the hallway on the left, grey checkered carpet and light orange wall on the right, and white hallway on the left back. A red wall is at the end of the hallway."
Yahoo
17-02-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Fact Check: No, these aren't real photos showing mammoth skeleton's excavation
Claim: Four images shared in social media posts were authentic photographs of a well-preserved mammoth skeleton discovered at a North American archaeological site. Rating: Since 2024, a set of images has circulated online that allegedly shows the excavation of the complete skeleton of a mammoth. Mammoths were a type of large elephant that went extinct around 4,000 years ago, according to the Natural History Museum in London. Two of the images appeared in multiple (archived) Facebook posts (archived) that paired them with a caption reading "Well-Preserved Mammoth Skeleton Unearthed at North America's Prominent Archaeological Site." (Facebook user Husky Chukcha) Other Facebook posts featured a collage that contained one of the same images alongside two different images that appeared to show the remains of mammoths emerging from the ground. The captions of these posts claimed the images showed a 15,000-year-old mammoth skeleton in North Africa. (Facebook user DiggingInto Archaeology) In short, none of the four images included in these posts were authentic photos of the remains of real mammoths. As a result, we've rated the images as fake. Although we have not yet identified the original creator or creators of the images, they all showed signs of being the products of artificial intelligence software. The AI image detectors WasItAI and Illuminarty both found a high likelihood that someone created the images using AI. Visual clues in the images also signaled that the images did not reflect reality. The skeletons in the images had multiple features that did not match the anatomy of real mammoth specimens held in the collections of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City and the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. Most obviously, the alleged skeletal mammoth remains in the images investigated here included trunks and ears, which are respectively highlighted in red and yellow in the collage below. In one of the images, visible in the upper right corner of the collage, the mammoth's trunk also appeared to end in a tusklike point. As is the case for those of modern elephants, mammoth trunks did not contain any bones, nor did they have sharp tips. Instead, real mammoth trunks consisted primarily of muscle. The external parts of mammoths' ears were likewise boneless (although, like humans, mammoths did have bones in their middle ears). (Facebook users HuskyChukcha [left] and DiggingInto Archaeology [right]) Other anatomical features seen in the images also failed to match the real anatomy of mammoths, such as the oddly branching ribs visible in the image that appeared in all the posts linked above. The ribs in question are outlined in blue in the above collage. In another image, which seemingly showed the mammoth skeleton from the rear, the mammoth appeared to have three separate tails emerging from its rump: one consisting of a single long, pointed bone and the other two resembling claws or talons, as can be seen surrounded by a green box in the above collage. By contrast, real mammoths had only one tail each, and their tails were part of their vertebral columns — meaning they consisted of many smaller bones. Finally, a real newly excavated mammoth skeleton would not stand upright on its own, as the skeletons in the images appeared to do. In order to produce the effect that a specimen is standing up, museum workers and other professionals who work with the fossils of mammoths, dinosaurs, and other animals must build and install complex mounts to support the bones and hold them in place. Another hint that the posts about the alleged discovery did not reflect reality was the inconsistency of information included in text form in posts sharing the images. As mentioned above, some posts implied the discovery was North African, while others said the location was "North America's Prominent Archaeological Site" — without any indication of which of the North American continent's many archaeological sites was intended. Some Facebook users also pointed out in comments that the scientists who excavate and study the fossilized remains of animals are called paleontologists, not archaeologists. That said, because mammoths and humans coexisted for tens of thousands of years, it's not unheard of for archaeological sites — that is, sites that show evidence of human activity — to also contain mammoth remains. In the past, we investigated whether another image authentically showed the preserved remains of a baby mammoth that died about 30,000 years ago. Clovis Mammoth Butchery: The Lange/Ferguson Site and Associated Bone Tool Technology – Center for the Study of the First Americans. Accessed 14 Feb. 2025. Dapcevich, Madison. "Authentic Picture of 30,000-Year-Old Baby Mammoth Remains?" Snopes, 14 Apr. 2024, "How Are Skeletal Mounts of Dinosaurs in Museum Exhibits Built?" American Museum of Natural History, July 2012, Mammuthus Primigenius (Blumbach) | 3D Digitization. Accessed 14 Feb. 2025. published, Cameron Duke. "Woolly Mammoths Survived on Mainland North America until 5,000 Years Ago, DNA Reveals." 22 Dec. 2021, The Intersecting Crossroads of Paleontology and Archeology: When Are Fossils Considered Artifacts? (U.S. National Park Service). Accessed 14 Feb. 2025. The Last of the Mammoths | Natural History Museum. Accessed 14 Feb. 2025. TRUTH OR TAIL: An Elephant's Trunk Has over 40,000 Muscles| Cleveland Zoological Society | June 26, 2023. Accessed 14 Feb. 2025.
