Maine police caught lying about using AI to alter drug bust photo

35 pointsposted 7 months ago
by montroser
(boingboing.net)

9 Comments

fallinghawks

7 months ago

I'm not sure why people are using AI for a task far better/easier done with a normal image editor. The badge could have been just superimposed at the top; it doesn't have to look like it was part of the original image. And if the photo carried legal implications (not this time), AI alteration would ruin that.

Edit. I'm pretty sure every AI photo editing app out there explicitly advertises that they use AI. Nobody wants to hide that feature. So I rather doubt the police claim that they thought they were using a normal photoshop app.

itsdrewmiller

7 months ago

“Take this picture and add the badge from foo bar police” is a lot easier than using any traditional image editor.

aspenmayer

7 months ago

Any savings in time or effort would be consumed by the subsequent public relations fallout and media response though, and probably then some.

leereeves

7 months ago

Or they just used the default photo editing app on Windows or Mac, which both use AI now.

zihotki

7 months ago

I don't see it as lying, just not very handy with the tooling. As for why the patch wasn't there in the first place - it sometimes happens. Was it needed/required for a shared photo? Dunno. It doesn't look like a big deal considering the photo was not used in legal proceedings

filoeleven

7 months ago

> "This is NOT an AI-generated photo," Westbrook Police declared on Facebook when first questioned about oddities in their photos of seized meth and fentanyl. They doubled down, insisting "Westbrook PD is not and would never generate an AI photo to try and depict evidence."

So this was...what, then?

jdonaldson

7 months ago

If it were just a simple copy/paste job with the patch, that's one thing. But the whole image has been turned into AI slop, with certain items moved, changed, or excluded. This just isn't an acceptable pattern for law enforcement communication of any kind.

financetechbro

7 months ago

You dont even need specialized software for this. You could literally do this in Microsoft PPT. This is like brining an atomic bomb to a fist fight - totally insane how AI is being treated like a Swiss Army knife

jmclnx

7 months ago

Welcome to policing in the US, seems worse then that now occurs :(