Amnesty International Slammed Over AI Protest Images

[Judi Lynn]

The organization apologized for publishing AI-generated photographs of Colombia’s 2021 protests.

Maya Pontone 8 hours ago

This week, international human rights watchdog Amnesty International faced backlash from photojournalists and other online critics for using AI-generated images depicting photorealistic scenes of Colombia’s 2021 protests. Although there is no shortage of photographs from the demonstrations, the advocacy group told the Guardian that it opted to use artificially edited imagery to protect the identities of protesters who may be vulnerable to state retribution.

The 2021 strike — which was incited by an unpopular tax raise and then fueled by police brutality and other forms of state violence — left at least 40 people dead and many more missing, according to official figures.

Amnesty International shared the AI images as part of a since-deleted social media campaign marking the two years since the Colombian protests, paired with disclaimers that acknowledged the use of AI. Commentators online were quick to notice errors in the fake images. For instance, one of them showed a woman wearing the tri-colored Colombian flag and being dragged off by police, a familiar still from the 2021 protests. But on social media, people pointed out that the colors in the national flag were in the wrong order, and the faces of the protesters and police officers were eerily smoothed over. Additionally, the uniforms of the officers were out-of-date.

In response to the public outcry, Amnesty International has since deleted the images from its social media channels.

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“Our main goal was to highlight the grotesque violence by the police against people in Colombia. It is important to state that the purpose was to protect people who could be exposed. But we could choose drawings or other things,” Amnesty International tweeted.

More:
https://hyperallergic.com/820339/amnesty-international-slammed-over-ai-protest-images/