Human rights advocacy group Amnesty International has retracted images generated by artificial intelligence used in a campaign to promote police brutality during nationwide protests in Colombia in 2021.
The group has reportedly been criticized for using artificial intelligence to produce images for its social media accounts. One of the images was featured in The Guardian on May 2.
It depicts a woman being dragged away by police during protests in Colombia over long-standing deep economic and social inequalities in 2021. However, a closer look reveals some discrepancies in the images, such as weird-looking faces, outdated police uniform s, and a A protester that seems to be somehow wrapped around a correct flag that isn't Colombia.
There is also a disclaimer at the bottom of each image saying the images were generated by AI. Amnesty International told the Guardian it chose to use artificial intelligence to generate the imagery to protect protesters from possible state reprisals. Amnesty International Americas Director Erika Gu evara rosas said : "We have removed the images from our social media posts because we did not want criticism of the use of AI-generated images to distract from our core message of support for the victims and their quest for justice in Colombia,"
Photojournalists criticizing the use of the images, commenting that in today's highly polarized era of fake news, people are more likely to question the credibility of the media.
Commenting on the deleted images, media scholar Roland Meyer said, "image synthesis almost tacitly reproduces and reinforces visual stereotypes." Meyer added that they were "ultimately nothing more than propaganda." In late April, Twitter users shared additional images, which have now been removed by Amnesty International. Artificial intelligence is increasingly being used to generate images and visual media. In late April, HustleGPT founder Dave Craige posted a video of the US Republican Party using AI images in their political campaign. “We all knew AI and deepfake images were going to enter the political sphere, I just didn't realize it was going to happen so quickly," he exclaimed.
