Fears history is being rewritten with AI technology

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The images generated by artificial intelligence have the potential to rewrite history, experts warn.

Free online tools can create false representations of events such as Holocaust and September 11 in seconds.

Experts say that the results blur the line between the fact and fiction, leaving the insecure people of who or what to trust.

AAP Factcheck tested several of the most popular free text AI models to see how easy it is to create convincing images of historical events.

Using text indications, in a matter of seconds we produced realistic historical images of Adolf Hitler and Winston Churchill sharing a warm hug, and Volodymyr Zelenskiy sharing a joke with Vladimir Putin.

Toby Walsh, an expert at AI at the University of NSW, said this distortion of history has a very real impact.

“We can’t ‘without seeing’ images,” he said. “The Pope will always wear a white jacket. Trump will always be arrested by the New York Police.

“So, yes, false images can be rooted in our history, mixed with reality. And that is already demonstrating to be problematic.

“Are those images of Gaza in real or false debris? What can we believe when there is so much manipulation?”

AAP Factcheck has previously reported on Facebook pages that collect great followers by publishing images generated by the alleged historical events and people.

While some may seem harmless, as an image of the beatles, others are more problematic.

Nancy Green, a former slave who became Aunt Jemima Pancakes’s face as one of the first African -American models, is represented on a “history” page as a white woman.

The same page also presents images that claim to represent the Holocaust.

An image, which is subtitled “Liberation of the Auschwitz field”, shows well -dressed and well fed prisoners, which disagrees with genuine images after the release of the concentration camp in 1945.

Victoria Grace Richardson-Walden, Director of the Holocaust Memory and Education Research Group, Landecker Digital Memory Lab, said that the ability to create such visual distortions gives credit to the denials of the Holocaust and those who wish to distort the past.

She said that many AI models contain railings that prevent the generation of images through terms such as “Hitler” or “Holocaust.”

However, if, as many predict, AI becomes a key source of information production, the strong censorship of the Holocaust, but not other historical events, could have devastating consequences.

“We risk the holocaust being invisible,” said Professor Richardson-Walden.

Mykola Makhortykh, principal researcher in algorithms and AI at the University of Bern, said that bad actors not only use AI to present false images such as genuine historical images.

Sometimes, he said, they are used to make fun and degrade, as an image of Anne Frank in bikini or as propaganda.

“We find many cases in which memory about massive atrocities and genocides appropriates to, for example, mobilize the public or, in some cases, even justify and normalize new atrocities (as is happening in the case of the Russian war against Ukraine),” he said.

A particular example is the work of pro-Kremlin activist groups that have used AI to create images of military and women of World War II along with forces involved in the invasion of Ukraine.

“It’s about drawing parallels between World War II and the current war in Ukraine as part of the effort to normalize and justify the invasion,” said Dr. Makhortykh.

Sometimes, the intention can be to add a dramatic effect or give life to history, as is the case with a recent announcement of the United States Secret Service published by Donald Trump.

It has moving images generated by ABAHAM Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt and images of lunar missions, interspersed with real JFK images, the fall of the Berlin wall and the attempted murder at Ronald Reagan.

However, such videos act to further blur the lines between facts and fiction.

“We have not witnessed many events in human history and when AI is used in a unusual way to produce false images, it will lead people to believe in inaccurate versions of history and even create false versions of historical events,” said Niusha Shafiabady, an expert in computational intelligence at the Australian Catholic University.

The Greek philosopher Aristotle emphasized the value of studying history to understand human nature and the reasons behind the events, said associated professor Shafiabady.

“He believed that by analyzing past events, one could obtain information about patterns and principles that shape human behavior and society.

“Imagine what kind of behavior will inspire the false and invented history.”

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