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

34 pointsposted 13 hours ago
by montroser
(boingboing.net)

8 Comments

fallinghawks

11 hours 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

11 hours ago

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

aspenmayer

11 hours 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

4 hours ago

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

zihotki

12 hours 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

11 hours 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

11 hours 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.

jmclnx

12 hours ago

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