AI-generated images of trash piles in Paris mislead on Thai social media
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on August 11, 2023 at 10:45
- 5 min read
- By Chayanit ITTHIPONGMAETEE, AFP Thailand
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"This is what the French capital city, Paris, looks like. The dream city... now turned into this in reality," reads Thai-language sticker text on a video shared on TikTok on July 31, 2023.
The video -- viewed more than 400,000 times -- shows a compilation of images of trash-strewn streets with structures resembling famous Paris attractions such as the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre Museum and the Arc de Triomphe in the background.
"The government invested money in wars," the post's Thai-language caption reads, appearing to suggest the French capital had been turned into a wasteland following days of violent clashes in the wake of the fatal police shooting of a 17-year-old during a traffic stop in Paris (archived link).
The same video has also been shared alongside a similar claim on Facebook here, here and here, as well as on Twitter, which is being rebranded as "X", here.
Users' comments on the posts indicate they believed the images were genuine.
"This is what happens when people riot!" reads one.
"This is the dark age of the developed countries. Thailand is better off developing itself gradually. I'm proud to be Thai," another comment writes.
But the pictures were generated using artificial intelligence (AI).
AI-generated photos
Close analysis of the images found some signs they had been generated using AI, such as distorted human faces.
Below are screenshots of some of the images shown in the TikTok video, with distorted faces marked by AFP:
AFP has published a guide to help identify AI-generated images.
A further Google reverse image search using some of the images in the TikTok video found the same pictures were posted on a Facebook page called "Nik Art" on July 30, 2023 (archived link). The account's bio states it is a visual arts page.
The post is captioned: "Paris, the city of love."
Below are screenshot comparisons of two of the images shared in the TikTok video (left) and the same pictures published by Nik Art (right):
The Facebook page's administrator confirmed on August 7 they created the images using Midjourney, a generative AI program that creates pictures based on text prompts (archived link).
"Yes, I made them with Midjourney," Nik Art told AFP.
The creator sent AFP screenshots of the text prompts they used in Midjourney, as well as the resulting generated images:
Using the same text prompts on Midjourney, AFP was able to generate images similar to the ones by Nik Art:
Garbage collectors' strike
Although the June shooting of Nahel M., a teen of Algerian origin, rekindled long-standing accusations of systemic racism among security forces in France and led to an outpouring of anger causing widespread destruction of property, there were no reports of trash piling up during the riots (archived link).
However, actual scenes of piles of rubbish in the streets were seen when Parisian garbage collectors went on a three-week strike over proposed pension reform in March 2023 (archived link).
Thousands of tons of uncollected garbage littered the city's sidewalks at the time, which can be seen here in an AFP video published on March 13 (archived link).
AFP has previously debunked claims related to the unrest in France here, here, and here, while other fact checks about AI-generated images can be seen here, here, and here.
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