The link for this important article on Medium.com appeared on my radar via a post on the "AI Spotting" Facebook page. Here's the link: https://medium.com/adventures-in-consumer-technology/is-your-facebook-feed-full-of-ai-generated-junk-too-a2d8c40325cb
And the text of the entire article...
IS YOUR FACEBOOK FEED FULL OF AI GENERATED JUNK
TOO?
By
Shannon Steidel
Published
in Adventures in Consumer Technology
1.30.24
https://medium.com/adventures-in-consumer-technology/about
--------------------------------------------
“Maybe you still check your Facebook account every day like it’s 2011. Maybe you haven’t checked it in years or even deactivated it.
As much as people want to claim that Facebook is “dead,” the social network still boasts an impressive two billion daily users and three billion active users who check in at least once a month.
“But those are all old people,” you say.
True, Facebook’s main demographic skews older than its counterparts like Instagram and TikTok. And that’s what makes the recent AI takeover all the more concerning.
The new algorithm
In its heyday, Facebook used to feel much more like a tight-knit club. By starting out as a social media platform just for college kids, there was already an air of exclusivity. Users were quick to send dozens of friend requests so they could like, comment, poke, and tag their favorite people.
Up until recently, there was also an end to your newsfeed. Once you got caught up on all of the newest pictures and status updates and started recognizing the old stuff, you could rest assured that you were up to date on everyone’s lives and close your laptop or switch to a different app.
Of course, this is the last thing a social media platform really wants.
A better algorithm includes content from other sources outside of the friends and pages that you follow to keep you scrolling. By mixing in content that is “suggested for you” with friend’s posts and ads, people stay on Facebook longer, and more revenue is generated.
Content mills can’t seem to crank out enough content
With these changes, Facebook pages are more incentivized than ever to post more content and keep their engagement high. So, how do you spot the difference between a legitimate page and AI-created garbage? As of right now, it’s still pretty simple.
1.Everyone has the smoothest skin you’ve ever seen
Not every AI image is designed to look extremely realistic. It’s not unusual for content farms to recreate a celebrity’s picture in a smooth, more art-like style with just a dash of uncanny valley.
Other images are a little harder to identify upon first glance, but still relatively easy. Which one of these images was uploaded to Twitter by Jim Carrey, and which one was altered in an AI generator and posted to a weird Facebook page?
But why alter them at all? Why not just repost the original picture? Most likely, it’s a quick and easy way to help avoid copyright infringement as well as spam filters.
2. The comments are very nice, very short, and very fake
Because — they’re written by bots of course! Why else would these random pictures all have thousands upon thousands of likes and comments?
3. The content is just plain weird
Posting about celebrities and movies makes sense. It’s easy to grab pictures of famous actors from Google, run them through an AI program, and hope that nostalgia gets attention and engagement from at least a few real people.
Interestingly, there’s a random trend of AI content farms posting pictures of giant ice and wooden sculptures with their artists (who are also not real of course). This is probably because it’s just realistic enough to be believable, but wild enough to catch the precious attention of Facebook scrollers. Other popular options include kids holding pictures of art they made, military personnel, and of course, inspirational quotes.
And before you try to argue why the below image could be real, I’d invite you to take a closer look at the artist’s right hand (a classic AI dead giveaway!)
Who cares if Facebook is more cluttered than ever?
Facebook frequently receives jabs from its users and haters alike. However, it does offer unique qualities that make it worth using, at least for some.
Facebook groups offer an opportunity for users to connect with people they know in real life as well as people from around the world. While other platforms are more about influencers talking at you, joining Facebook groups can allow for real connection with others, which was the whole point of social media once upon a time.
Facebook Marketplace has also become a hugely popular way for users to buy and sell items, perhaps because it feels just a hair safer than Craigslist.
Shady origins
Additionally, these content generators do not always create their pages from scratch. Building a popular social media page requires time, work, and dedication, and it should be clear by now that content farms are not interested in any of those things.
If you scroll back far enough, you may discover that an AI-filled page once belonged to someone else and was hacked and rebranded. The hacker will remove the admins, change the name of the page, begin posting AI generated junk, and won’t even bother to delete the old content, which could be anything from a band’s past tour dates to pictures of dogs that were available for adoption.
What’s worse, Meta has limited authority, and maybe interest, in helping the thousands of people whose accounts are hacked and/or cloned every year. That popular page you spent years building? It’s now just a collection of smooth-skinned celebrities unfortunately.
Fooling users
No conversation about AI is complete without discussing the ramifications of tricking people into thinking that an image is real.
Yes, most of these images are more or less harmless
Yes, these pages have to abide by Facebook’s guidelines to ensure that their content is not only approved, but shown to the masses.
But it’s still disturbing to think about just how much social media content is now entirely fabricated. Filters and photoshop don’t hold a candle to AI programs that can create a completely new picture out of images it sourced from the internet.
Let’s hope that Meta can begin to crack down on this issue for the sake of its users.”
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