A manipulated photo of an explosion at the Pentagon in the USA caused a stir in online networks on Monday and led to a temporary collapse in stock market prices. The image, believed to have been created by an artificial intelligence (AI), was shared by several user accounts on internet services, prompting the US Department of Defense to issue a statement.

Mystery about fake image: Source of the fake photo remains unknown

The original source of the fake image remains unknown, and according to Forbes, the original post has since been deleted. It showed a dark cloud of smoke. “We can confirm that this is a hoax and that the Pentagon was not attacked today,” a spokesman said. The Arlington Fire Department, near Washington, also confirmed online that there had been no explosion or other incident at or near the Pentagon.

According to John Scott-Railton, a researcher at Citizen Lab, the fake image was distributed by a Twitter account similar to that of the Bloomberg news agency, among others.

This account had a blue tick. The problem is that these ticks used to be a sign of verified accounts, but since Twitter owner Elon Musk's reform, they can now be acquired without verification by paying a subscription.

Stock markets falter: Fake image leads to a temporary price collapse

The widely circulated image triggered a brief shock in the stock market: the S&P 500 index fell 0.29 percent compared to Friday's closing price before recovering. Pat O'Hare of the market analysis website briefing.com explained that there was a dip that was probably related to the fake news. “However, I would like to point out that the magnitude of the decline was not consistent with the seemingly bad nature of the fake news.”

Thanks to new AI technologies, laypeople can create convincing images in a very short time and without any expertise in image editing. This has recently led to discussions about several fake recordings, including alleged arrest images of former US President Donald Trump . The easy accessibility of these technologies increases the challenge of checking the authenticity of images and detecting manipulation, which we as Mimikama of course continue to deal with.

Source:

The standard

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Notes:
1) This content reflects the current state of affairs at the time of publication. The reproduction of individual images, screenshots, embeds or video sequences serves to discuss the topic. 2) Individual contributions were created through the use of machine assistance and were carefully checked by the Mimikama editorial team before publication. ( Reason )