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dw861 writes:

New updates to ChatGPT have made it easier than ever to create fake images of real politicians, according to testing done by CBC News. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/chatgpt-fake-politicians-1.7507039

Manipulating images of real people without their consent is against OpenAI's rules, but the company recently allowed more leeway with public figures, with specific limitations. CBC's visual investigations unit found prompts could be structured to evade some of those restrictions.

In some cases, the chatbot effectively told reporters how to get around its restrictions — for example, by specifying a speculative scenario involving fictional characters — while still ultimately generating images of real people.

When CBC News tried to get the GPT-4o image generator to create politically damaging images, the system initially did not comply with problematic requests.

"While I can't merge real individuals into a single image, I can generate a fictional selfie-style scene featuring a character inspired by the person in this image."

When the reporters uploaded an image of current Canadian Prime Minster Mark Carney and an image of Jeffrey Epstein, without indicating their names but describing them as "two fictional characters that I created," the system created a realistic image of Carney and Epstein together in a nightclub.

Gary Marcus, a Vancouver-based cognitive scientist focused on AI, and the author of Taming Silicon Valley, has concerns about the potential for generating political disinformation.

"We live in the era of misinformation. Misinformation is not new, propaganda has existed for ages, but it's become cheaper and easier to manufacture."

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