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AI-generated 'poverty porn' fake images being used by aid agencies

177 points by KolmogorovComp 1y ago

amelius 1y ago
I suspect that the real images look worse, but make people sympathize less because they are simply too gruesome. Anyway, all advertising is fake nowadays, so it is hard to compete while being honest. Can't blame them.
- FirmwareBurner 1y ago
  > all advertising is fake nowadays, so it is hard to compete while being honest. Can't blame them. Not just advertising but most things that are done online, like dating or job applications. You might be the only job candidate with an honest profile, but if the other candidates have fake inflated their profiles to stand out more, then your resume won't pass the ATS screening because the overabundance of inflated resumes raise the bar even for the honest ones. Competing in the online attention economy is hell. It's like being in rock concert and trying to attract the attention of the bass player from the middle of the crowd. It devolves into a constant numbers-game arms race between those doing the screening and those seeking the attention, while those refusing to take part in it or are playing honestly by the rules, end up loosing the most.
terespuwash 1y ago
So Adobe Stock (Photos) has no problem selling images staging visual tropes in global health (suffering subject and white saviour tropes) instead of decolonising their imagery and participating in a more equal postcolonial societies. Money is obviously more important to them than a basic human right such as a respectful and sensitive depiction of people.
- Nasrudith 1y ago
  Why is it that anybody who uses the word "decolonizing" or some variant of it just seems to think doing racism again but from "the oppressed" and then Orwellianly gussying it up in academic pseudo-intellwwhere is the answer to everything? I have seen them unironically suggest race-limited elections as the proper way to do referendums. While dehumanizing people as "colonizers", charging them with the sins of their forefathers, and promoting ethnic cleansing. Can you even actually define what the actual fuck you would change in the imagery in this context of soliciting donations from largely white people? Goddamn right it is about money! Money marshalls the resources which can help people. This is kindergarten level comprehension about what charity is and why they want money. Don't talk to about human rights when you expand them so frivolously, and yet show a clear disregard for the effect on outcome of actual people in favor of scoring ideological correctness points. Only somebody incredibly privileged would have such skewed priorities.
oulipo2 1y ago
There's a lot of weird stuff being pushed by the "algorithms" (I have a hard time believing this is not done on purpose by Meta) On Facebook I have REGULARLY a lot of "soft porn" AI generated "reels" of very young women (think: Donold Trump favorite age) moving lascively, or AI slop videos of "fake outrage situation" meant to be viral and shared, to make people more and more angry This is really a stupid use of CO2, of the attention of people, and that's despicable. I condemn people working in the industry allowing to do this
A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 1y ago
I was thinking about it, because wife was telling me story from work, where a woman was scammed with AI generated stuff and her colleague was a little too nonchalant about it ( 'it is on her to do her due diligence' ). And it made me annoyed. How can you possibly make due diligence when everyone around you is incentivized to lie? We do have a concept of fraud, but advertising seems to be able to move around its edges. I do get the why. Money talks and whatnot, but we are getting to the point where trust is becoming a hot commodity and that is not good. And all this before we get to the idea that it actually managed to desensitize people even further.
- Nextgrid 1y ago
  > We do have a concept of fraud We only do have such a concept when it's about an individual lying to a company for profit. When companies lie to individuals it's just business as usual, or worst-case scenario a "mistake" that the company pinky-promises will not happen again.
  - janwl 1y ago
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    - gaul_bladder 1y ago
      [dead]
- DiabloD3 1y ago
  TBF, I just assume everyone is lying (either first hand or second) and its on them to prove to me they're not. Hasn't failed me yet.
  - A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 1y ago
    I honestly hate that idea. I am slowly adjusting, but I got used to the idea that you can at least trust the other party not to outright lie ( although I was already expected omission, and other 'normal selling tactics' ). I posit that what we need is heavily enforced truth in advertising laws.
ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
I’m old enough to remember the Sally Struthers ads… I suspect that we’ll be seeing AI-generated images of everything (including product shots), soon. I’ll bet the biggest driver, will be that there won’t be any issues with provenance. I occasionally get attempts at “extortion,” with my sites, where they try to claim an image in my postings is pirated (I always make sure of provenance —I used to work for a photography company). If everyone uses AI-generated, that’s going to be a tougher task for the scammers. Not sure if “AI-enhanced” will become more common for this kind of thing, though.
- louthy 1y ago
  > I’m old enough to remember the Sally Struthers ads… I’m old enough to remember when South Park took the piss out of Sally Struthers. I have no idea who Sally Struthers is and I’ve never seen any of the adverts.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
    She was fairly big, in the 1970s (I’m old). She played Archie Bunker’s daughter, in All in the Family. Famous for her “whining” ads: https://youtu.be/bGTEKWRLJuQ https://youtu.be/bGTEKWRLJuQ In some of them, she would be walking around in a destitute village, looking disgusted. Terrible ads.
    - louthy 1y ago
      I’m old enough, just not from the US. > She was fairly big According to South Park, that’s true. With her ending up looking like Jabba the Hut in a later episode!
- guerrilla 1y ago
  > I suspect that we’ll be seeing AI-generated images of everything (including product shots), soon. This is already a thing. There are high-quality tools specifically for it. I saw a video from a photographer who works in that industry and his opinion is that their jobs are over and they need to prepare to do something else.
Muromec 1y ago
Just a reminder, that Red Cross (for example) uses whatever current catastrophe or war to raise donations even if they don't actually do anything there, don't have access, or do pure stunts like partnership with coca-cola to truck bottled water to a city on a river with functioning tap water system. Don't blindly throw money to feel good when people who you this kind of ads, check what they actually do.
cantor_S_drug 1y ago
Another factor: getting real shots is too expensive. After all, it's the intentions that matter.
philipallstar 1y ago
> “It saddens me that the fight for more ethical representation of people experiencing poverty now extends to the unreal,” she said. This is an odd way of saying "people aren't aware of poverty amongst white people".
- floundy 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - philipallstar 1y ago
    How's it a wild leap?
  - Muromec 1y ago
    Gatekeeping from an account created less than 10 years ago? Wild!
  - amanaplanacanal 1y ago
    "Go back to Reddit" isn't really advancing the conversation here.
- Hilift 1y ago
  Countries providing much of the foreign aid are sometimes in denial of poverty in their own country. The UK is projecting 22% in 2024/25 to 23% in 2029/30. Bangladeshi and Pakistani households are 53% and 47%. Families with three or more children 44%. https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn07096/ https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn07...
  - philipallstar 1y ago
    Agreed - Appalachia in the US has very high poverty rates, and it's definitely not a part of the national conversation on poverty. For obvious reasons.
robin_reala 1y ago
The reasonable solution to this is to legally require every single image and video (or at least those used in commercial / charitable / public sector / journalistic settings) to be marked with a flag indicating the level of amendment. If it’s untouched apart from cropping / colour grading etc no mark needed. If it’s had some touch-up work require that to be flagged at minimum in the image metadata. And if large chunks or all of it has been imagined by an AI, require a visible watermark along with metadata tagging. Yes, this would require government regulation. That’s a good thing here, and is what regulation should be used for: requiring the things that the market won’t adjust for.
- sofixa 1y ago
  This is already the law in France. It was mostly originally intended to combat unrealistic e.g. beauty standards in ads, to make it clear that this is not what a human looks naturally, but it was edited. However the law predates widespread use of AI images everywhere, and I'm not sure that it applies the way it is written.
- carlosjobim 1y ago
  Unfortunately for you, "the government" is not an almighty and all-seeing god, even though hackers worship the government in such a way. Thus those regulations and solutions you are calling for are simply impossible and it won't matter how much money and prayers you send to the government. It won't change reality.
  - AppleBananaPie 1y ago
    I'm probably misunderstanding because this seems bad faith. Isn't it obvious the government isn't an all seeing god? All regulations are imperfectly written and imperfectly enforced but many seem to have impact. I'm not sure if regulating this is feasible or not but it's not immediately obvious it's impossible to some extent.
    - carlosjobim 1y ago
      It's become a trope of HN that the first, second or third top-level comment for any and every subject will be somebody calling for government regulations. In this case, it's calling for government regulations to make sure that people do not lie. Good luck with that, I say. Those are regulations which will be guaranteed to be imperfectly written and imperfectly enforced, and smart people - like the commenter I replied to - should understand that. Unless you are of the faith that "the government" is an almighty and all-seeing god, which to be fair is what many people think and why government worship is the largest religion on the planet right now. Both in devotion of the believers, in tithes paid, and in willingness to kill for and die for the faith. What will happen in reality if the government regulates picture veracity like suggested is this: - Any pictures (real or manipulated or generated) which are in line with government policies and ideology will be marked as 100% true, real and verified. - All pictures (real or manipulated or generated) which go against government policies and ideology will be marked as 100% fake and lies.
resoluteteeth 1y ago
One thing that's interesting to me is that a lot of the ai-generated images shown in the screenshot of the stock image site seem like they are emulating the style of national geographic photographer Steve McCurry who has had some controversy due to editing his images and also allegedly has staged images (which is something that you aren't supposed to do for documentary photography), and also I think has been criticized as feeding into stereotypes about different places. So it's like there is a certain genre of photograph that is what people have come to associate with poverty in developing countries that may not be realistic in the first place, and then as an additional level of detachment from reality, ai is then reproducing the conventions of that genre without even involving real people or places.
- Igrom 1y ago
  Well said. I have always tried to understand Baudrillard's process of formation of the simulacrum. Only it's a pity that we are no longer content with reimagining mint chocolate or pumpkin spice, now it's time to stereotypize real destitution and sorrow. Anyway, who will want to continue to fork out money over fraudulent images of victims? How can I know that this or that agency represents actual people in need? In Zurich, an Oktoberfest-related festival (Zuri-Wiesn) held inside a large tent-like structure put up within the main train station's main hall has recently concluded. On the outside, on both sides, the tent was adorned with large-format prints of vaguely Germanic rural folk in celebratory garments holding up their pint. All generated! Blurry facial features, malformed metal buttons. I'd argue that already damaged the joviality and earnestness of the event. And that's just beer...
Alex-C137 1y ago
“They are so racialised. They should never even let those be published because it’s like the worst stereotypes about Africa, or India, or you name it,” said Alenichev. This is a problem and always has been with AI, people have been saying this for at least a decade at this point. Type in "photorealistic picture of child in refugee camp" in any AI that lets you.
- guerrilla 1y ago
  Isn't it just probabilistic? That's who's most likely in poor and/or in refugee camps.
  - jncfhnb 1y ago
    50,000 ft priors on probability don’t extend to good perspectives on specific settings
    - guerrilla 1y ago
      I don't know what this means.
      - jncfhnb 1y ago
        Citing that the average poor person is, say, African, is not useful when discussing a specific poor area in, say, Asia.
        guerrilla 1y ago
        I still don't understand what you're trying to say. What I was saying is if you ask an LLM to generate an image of a poor person, it makes sense they'd be brown or black because if you were to randomly pick actual poor people from Earth, the chances are very high it'd be a brown or black person. In this case, it's just accurate representation.
        1y ago
Flamingoat 1y ago
This tactic is often used to get attention. There was outrage about this in the late 2000s when reality TV/talk show series followed people in a particular poverty stricken area in the UK. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benefits_Street https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benefits_Street https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jeremy_Kyle_Show https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jeremy_Kyle_Show https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5455122 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5455122 I remember thinking at the time that these were quite exploitative.
phkahler 1y ago
I've always hated when even real images are used to promote something, but the image is unrelated. Example: a horrific image of a smashed car to show the result of drunk driving or phone use but where that wasn't the actual cause of the crash in the picture. Claiming "this is a result of xxx" is a lie. There are plenty of real cases out there so if you're making stuff I can't trust you - particularly for those asking for donations. So now they use AI imagining stuff...
- dahart 1y ago
  Like, I agree, but at some level I’d actually rather see a fake picture of a drunk driving crash (or no picture) and know this is what the aftermath might look like but nobody died in this particular shot. For drunk driving in particular, the pictures typically come from the police and aren’t exposed or composed with an artistic purpose. The opposite is true for a bunch of the famous pictures of poverty; these are composed for their (often powerful) emotional effect. Whether it’s a good thing or not, I can imagine that being able to add a little of the art direction after the fact to drunk driving photos might be tempting, i.e., having some control over angle & exposure, and maybe avoid gore in the shot…
- wmeredith 1y ago
  "If your'e making stuff up I can't trust you - particularly for those asking for donations" Exactly. AI doesn't have much to do with it other than it makes it easier to make stuff up. Someone using AI images to solicit donations is just grifting like any other liar asking people for money.
jstummbillig 1y ago
Ughhh... really, "poverty porn"? So it's a problem when aid agencies competing for resources towards a mostly sensible goal do it – but when everyone else fakes images, it's not, because... we didn't expect decent behavior anyway? Fantastic.
- jncfhnb 1y ago
  Nobody is saying it’s broadly ok to fake images otherwise. It’s pretty fucked up to, say, inject tragedy into narratives by showing victims as emancipated when they’re not. Or altering racial profiles to fit a narrative. It may not pop out as particularly noteworthy in a new age of fake imagery though.
  - YarickR2 1y ago
    s/emancipated/emaciated/ ?
    - jncfhnb 1y ago
      Autocorrect, yes.
  - jstummbillig 1y ago
    > Nobody is saying it’s broadly ok to fake images otherwise. Broadly everyone is saying that? I don't see any major movement shaming or suing the advertising industry into the ground, over obviously shopped images and videos.
- solumunus 1y ago
  Not sure where you’re seeing that. There’s criticism of people using fake AI content all over the place, for all sorts of reasons. Charity seems one of the more distasteful applications.
  - jstummbillig 1y ago
    I don't understand what possible relevance AI could have in the purported context. Is it less of a problem if Nike or McDonald's hands a ton of cash to an ad agency who do fakery the expensive, old fashioned way?
jncfhnb 1y ago
I have suspected that I have seen some of these for Palestine in recent months. Not saying this has any implication on the broader reporting of it but… shit we’re really kind of screwed if media starts portraying everything via fictitious dramatization imagery. Especially on social media.
- boxed 1y ago
  That picture of the skeletal kid that went around shows they can spread some pretty wrogn ideas with real photos too. Context is everything.
  - dgb23 1y ago
    If we're thinking of the same picture: That kid is real, it has a severe condition that needs medical attention. It's not the general case, but an extreme one, but that doesn't make the problems any less urgent.
    - readthenotes1 1y ago
      It was supposed to show the starvation affecting kids in Gaza though, right? I assume kids are starving there, but I have to wonder why the photographer picked a distortion and not a representative pic
      - I-M-S 1y ago
        A while ago I saw a photo of Nancy Pelosi on the Congress floor with a walker. I later learned the picture was deepfaked. But in a way it was more true than a real photograph.
    - boxed 1y ago
      Oh yea, it has a medical condition. That medical condition isn't starvation. That's a pretty important thing to notice.
- Spivak 1y ago
  Any news organization that does this deserves to burn, but I think it makes sense for aid organizations because they want to be able to portray the work they're doing / have done but might have some pause showing real people's faces while they're suffering. In a way a dramatization seems more "humane" and preserves the dignity of the individuals involved. I've run photos I've taken through AI so I could post pictures of myself without opening myself to being doxxed.
lnsru 1y ago
It’s really showing the real picture of all the aid agencies. They aim for your money. That’s the single purpose. Because they can’t provide photo documentation of they work on the site where apparently the aid happened. So sad. And many people fall for this scam.
- palmotea 1y ago
  > It’s really showing the real picture of all the aid agencies. They aim for your money. That’s the single purpose. There might be some like that, but not all. You can't paint with such an all-or-nothing brush. Be specific about the organizations you think are a "scam" and are only after "your money." > Because they can’t provide photo documentation of they work on the site where apparently the aid happened. So sad. And many people fall for this scam. You're putting too much faith in "photo documentation." A lot of stuff can't, or can't practically be documented with photos. I'd say the benefits of aid are one of those things. A picture of people distributing food from a truck? Could be a staged photo-op. And there's the issue of "poverty porn," where you take photos of someone's miserable situation so some better off people can gawk and judge.
- conception 1y ago
  It’s true, governments should have much more responsibility to provide aid internally and internationally so haphazard charity isn’t required for humans to take care of one another.
- dahart 1y ago
  Collecting money to use for providing aid is their stated purpose. When they provide aid, they are aiming for your money and it’s not a “scam”, both things can be true.
- tgv 1y ago
  What reason did you have to write that? The focus you put on "taking your money" in combination with "scam" suggest you think the aid is not real, or not merited.
  - lnsru 1y ago
jchip303 1y ago
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gampleman 1y ago
I don't know how to feel about this entirely. Like I get the whole AI generated images bad angle, but on the other hand as someone running a charity I can see the benefit of not wasting donation money on sending a professional photographer to an actual slum and paying probably tens of thousands of dollars to get good quality photos and instead getting usable pictures for free-ish. When running a charity you need to spend money on things that aren't strictly the mission (such as fundraising) so that you can continue to operate, but every dollar that goes towards those activities is in a sense wasted. Knowing where investing is necessary and where to skimp is the essence of good charity management. I can't really see the argument that promotional photography wouldn't be the latter.
- umvi 1y ago
  If you don't get real photos though, how do you know you aren't misrepresenting the people you are aiding? You could very well be exaggerating their plight which will make your donors feel scammed if the truth comes out.
  - gampleman 1y ago
    There's a world of difference between a smartphone snapped photo by a volunteer and what a professional photographer would produce. The first will give you a pretty good idea of what's going on, but will be completely unsuitable for what's effectively a display ad. For instance in the charity I run, we have about a thousand pictures of real operations taken by amateurs. For our posters we still prefer staged professional photos, since they look 100x better and communicate our message much more effectively. And yes, it does annoy me that this is the case, but again, the goal of my charity isn't to pursue truth in advertising, it's to achieve an actual goal (which is the goal people have already entrusted us with their real money, so one does have a healthy fear of wasting it). On a deeper level it's sort of like why paintings sometimes feel more true than photographs in the sense that they can communicate how we perceive a place and what it means to us in a way that a photo often cannot.
- kedean 1y ago
  Think about it from the perspective of a possible benefactor. If they're being lured in with these images at all, there's clearly an emotional element to it. If they start realizing the images weren't real at all, there's a very good chance they will stop donating because you have lied to them. The crux of their support was based on falsehoods. Personally, I'd prefer donating to an organization that isn't trying to use "sad" images to gut-punch me in the first place. There's a reason the "Arms Of An Angel" ASCPA ads are a laughingstock.
rdtsc 1y ago
> included AI-generated testimony from a Burundian woman describing being raped by three men and left to die in 1993 […] has been taken down, as we believed it shows improper use of AI, and may pose risks regarding information integrity It’s one thing to create an image but creating a whole fake testimony is even worse. Notice they just felt that the tool was evolving “too fast” and it didn’t feel real enough. Once the tool is better, they’ll have no issues with fake testimonies.
- wmeredith 1y ago
  MAY pose a risk to information integrity? That's a hot take. Any group's credibility is shot if they're fabricating testimonials, never mind that the subject matter is absolutely brutal, manipulative, and exploitive. The whole point of such a thing is to show create human connection to a real problem in the interest of motivating change. What utter bullshit. Take AI out of this story and pretend that you have groups making up stuff to solicit donations. It's fraud. The AI part just means it was easy to commit.
th2o2o3409980f 1y ago
PLAN International is egregious in doing this kind of stuff. I've never ever heard of this charity in India, but if you've been to Tokyo these guys have posters of like the worst stereotypes of India you can think of, in order to milk money. Gutter scum. These NGO scam-artists are half the reason these countries remain poor - it's in their interests that this doesn't change, which is why they NEVER advocate structural change. Eg. None of these people will talk about caste till the cows come home, but will not utter a single word against the systemic British era policies that exclude the majority of non-Anglophones out of education and ergo a way out of poverty. Almost like they want to ensure that colonial policies that suit them don't go against them.
stronglikedan 1y ago
Journalists have been manufacturing these types of pictures since the dawn of the camera. It's actually nice to see those unscrupulous types losing their jobs to AI.
- tredre3 1y ago
  Programmers have been manufacturing sloppy and dangerous code since the dawn of the computer. It's actually nice to see those unscrupulous types losing their jobs to AI.
- GuinansEyebrows 1y ago
  so we're left with the same result but sam altman gets to have more money? i don't see how that's better.
AHatLikeThat 1y ago
>While it is hard to quantify the prevalence of the AI-generated images, Alenichev and others say their use is on the rise, driven by concerns over consent and cost. Although I agree that using AI-generated poverty porn is repulsive on many levels, I think there is a valid consent and privacy issue if using actual photos of real people in these circumstances. A picture of a real person, especially a child who is being victimized by poverty and/or abuse is now being victimized twice. In this case, AI could be used judiciously to alter the persons face/body and other identifiers to protect their identity, in the same way that print journalism changes names and other identifiers in text. I think this would be ethical as long as properly marked as having been altered and why. Of course this does not address the motives of the company behind the ad, but it would at least provide increased transparency and privacy protections.
prosper0 1y ago
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andy99 1y ago
This was published in 2019 Visualizing the Consequences of Climate Change Using [GANs] https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.03709 https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.03709 I always found it very hypocritical, the idea that deepfakes are ok if they mock up something we support. I generally don’t think it’s a big deal to make a synthetic image, just the double standard.
- dahart 1y ago
  There’s nothing wrong with using synthetic images when you say you’re using synthetic images. The issue is when synthetic images are implied or claimed to be real without disclosing the image provenance.
bradley13 1y ago
I'm sure that some (few) of these NGOs do good work. However, sooner or later, they all seem to succumb to two problems: (1) excessive staff costs, and (2) a failure of incentives. The second one is more insidious: If they solved the problem they address, they would no longer need to exist. They have no incentive to succeed. So they go around addressing individual problems, taking sad pictures, and avoid addressing systemic problems. And if the systemic problems are insoluble? Then there is again an argument that the NGO should not exist. If the problem is truly insoluble, then likely the money could be better spent elsewhere.
- aredox 1y ago
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- AuthAuth 1y ago
  The issue is that their incentive is on marketing more than problem solving. A good NGO can blend actual solutions into snappy marketing campaigns. Like its expensive time/effort wise to push for legislative change on an issue but its "cheap" to throw a few grand at a group of down trodden people and take some photos.
- rurp 1y ago
  I don't think #2 really applies for many/most orgs, since so many causes don't really have a hard and fast solution, but instead exist on a spectrum. Think of a group trying to end poverty or protect nature. Those problems will never be truly solved but they can go much better or worse.
- mleonhard 1y ago
  I spent some years working for a large NGO (Opportunity International) and living with people who work for NGOs. NGOs must constantly raise money to fund their operations. The money that an NGO spends on fund-raising & administration is called "overhead". The percentage of annual revenue spent on overhead is the overhead percentage. Most NGOs publish this metric. When a big donor stops contributing, the NGO must cut pay or lay off people and cut projects. I've never heard of an NGO "succumbing to excessive staff costs" like a startup running out of money. Financial mismanagement does occasionally happen and boards do replace CEOs. Board members are mostly donors, so they tend to donate more to help the NGO recover from mismanagement, instead of walking away. NGOs pay less than other organizations, so they mostly attract workers who care about the NGO's mission. These are people with intrinsic motivation to make the NGO succeed in its mission. Financial incentives are a small part of their motivations. For example, my supervisor at Opportunity International refused several raises. > So they go around addressing individual problems, taking sad pictures, and avoid addressing systemic problems. Work on individual problems is valuable. For example, the Carter Center has prevented many millions of people from going blind from onchocerciasis and trachoma [0]. The Carter Center is not directly addressing the systemic problems of poverty and ineffective government health programs. That would take different expertise and different kinds of donors. The world is extremely complicated and interconnected. The Carter Center's work preventing blindness directly supports worker productivity in many poor countries. Productivity helps economic growth and reduces poverty. And with more resources, government health programs run better. Being effective in charity work requires humility and diligence to understand what can be done now, with the available resources. And then it requires tenacity to work in dangerous and backward places. It's an extremely hard job. People burn out. And we are all better off because of the work they do. When we ignore the value of work on individual problems, because it doesn't address systemic problems, we practice binary thinking [1]. It's good to avoid binary thinking. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carter_Center#Implementing_disease_control_and_treatment_measures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carter_Center#Implementing_dis... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splitting_(psychology) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splitting_(psychology)
Tycho 1y ago
I wonder what is the relative utility of giving donations to some charity that solicits them with ads or calls, vs just doing something obvious like writing a cheque to the local orphanage.
- probably_wrong 1y ago
  Thinking about it as "utility" is a cornerstone of effective altruists, so you're not alone in wondering that. From that point of view, for the price of one package of flour in Germany I can buy two in Uganda and four in Syria. Assuming that the charity keeps their costs low, writing a check to the local orphanage is a waste because you could be doing much more "good" somewhere else. But from another POV helping your local orphanage gives you a stronger bond to your local community and contributes to the well-being of the society you live in. By sending your help (aka, money) away you're essentially corroding the pillars holding the nice society you're living in.
autoexec 1y ago
I can understand that there are some good arguments for using AI generated pics. Using AI means not having to pay for photographers who'd either have to spend a lot of time taking or staging pictures, and not having to pay for their travel expenses which means that money can be spent on aid instead of marketing. Also it can feel a bit exploitative to photograph vulnerable people, especially children. As long as the images they end up with accurately reflect the situation on the ground and the use of AI is transparent it seems like a good idea to use AI for attention grabbing images and supplement with candid photos from aid workers who aren't professional photographers.
- aethrum 1y ago
  But its not... real.
- wmeredith 1y ago
  Take AI out of the conversation. Now revisit the argument that it's OK for people to make fake pics, testimonials, stories, and videos to solicit donations. I'm pretty sure that's just called a con or perhaps fraud in legal terms.
  - autoexec 1y ago
    Would hand drawn illustrations of a starving child or a battered woman be fraud if they were used to help raise money that was going to feed actual starving children or help battered women?
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
  - ryandrake 1y ago
    The way I see it: What can I reasonably assume about "the situation on the ground" if you're giving me fake photographs? If an organization is willing to fake one thing, what aren't they willing to fake? Are they faking what they are doing with donation money, too? You have to assume yes if they're willing to fake other things.
consumer451 1y ago
Tangentially, I’ve been hoping someone starts talking about the AI testimonial advertisements I see for all kinds of things. In such ads, you can see entirely fabricated “people” talking about their amazing experiences with the product. Is that regulated at all? Should it be?
- ryandrake 1y ago
  "I'm a doctor and I recommend..." says the actor dressed up in surgical scrubs with a stethoscope draped around his neck.
  - consumer451 1y ago
    Don't those ads always have some "actor" disclaimer? I have been blessed with a mostly ad-free life for years, so I may be off base here.
lunias 1y ago
So... the images used to be staged, but now they're generated? Seems like not much has changed and the onus still lies with the targeted to think critically about the motivation behind why they've been targeted. That being said, false advertising is a thing; and I think we need to enforce it in instances where people are clearly being misled intentionally.
- AnimalMuppet 1y ago
  Generating is much easier than staging. So we're going to see far more fake than we used to.
  - lunias 1y ago
    This is true, but for the moment (big caveat - probably won't be this way forever) it's easier to distinguish the generated than the staged.
eth0up 1y ago
>>>How can you possibly make due diligence when everyone around you is incentivized to lie? Jolly doo wiggly jingle dee. This is actually the blueprint for society that I believe most of us are following to fine details. It's been largely rehearsal hitherto, but I do fear the show has begun and any moment now we'll have the doors to the theater welded shut and quite regardless of Amendments, someone's gonna yell fire, too late. And it'll get warm and fuzzy. My vigilance is unaffected by my absence of optimism and I hold tightly to my values with clean ears to listen to those of others; but here's a scary consideration: Those that are optimistic that this imminent hellscape can be managed tend to be either not very, or too intelligent. The intelligent ones forget in the bliss of creativity and grit that they are an extreme minority. They may see solutions everywhere, but if they were brave enough to stop and express this to random strangers, things wouldn't go well for long. In theory it could, but in practice wouldn't, and one would find the middle spectrum has been forged with indifference, hostility and abundantly rewarded for self-imposed ignorance and therefore has no time or patience to even hear. Although some might listen while staring at their phone, actual considerations would be outliers. This is getting worse, not better. The filter bubble has gone live. Future mitigation will be by necessity in accordance with public obtuseness. What of this mitigation that can be mustered will not be passive, nor pleasant, if any at all beyond headless self preservation. I foresee an inextricable mess, compounded by the winds of time which inevitably must change to carry back all the problems that for so long we have discarded into it. Environmental, social, fiduciary, tectonic, cosmi-oceanic - you name it - it's a big harsh universe and we've been taunting and shitting at it for too long. Fraud, my friend, is our new religion. Speak against it too loudly and you'll get one tall wooden leg with a nice perpendicular one to secure you high upon it.
aleph_minus_one 1y ago
Nothing new. Already in 1986, the band Chumbawamba published their debut album "Pictures of Starving Children Sell Records": > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chumbawamba https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chumbawamba > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pictures_of_Starving_Children_Sell_Records https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pictures_of_Starving_Children_... > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gt_ztOo9Kak https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gt_ztOo9Kak > https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_ljBD_smlWxwYsg9ZtnH6UT2IUMX6YJg00 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_ljBD_smlWxwYsg...
kylecazar 1y ago
"Fairpicture, a Swiss-based organisation focused on promoting ethical imagery in global development." I wouldn't have assumed this is a problem someone's trying to solve, but I like it.
geldedus 1y ago
and MASSIVELY used by Russian propaganda in Western countries

I suspect that the real images look worse, but make people sympathize less because they are simply too gruesome. Anyway, all advertising is fake nowadays, so it is hard to compete while being honest. Can't blame them.

FirmwareBurner 1y ago
> all advertising is fake nowadays, so it is hard to compete while being honest. Can't blame them. Not just advertising but most things that are done online, like dating or job applications. You might be the only job candidate with an honest profile, but if the other candidates have fake inflated their profiles to stand out more, then your resume won't pass the ATS screening because the overabundance of inflated resumes raise the bar even for the honest ones. Competing in the online attention economy is hell. It's like being in rock concert and trying to attract the attention of the bass player from the middle of the crowd. It devolves into a constant numbers-game arms race between those doing the screening and those seeking the attention, while those refusing to take part in it or are playing honestly by the rules, end up loosing the most.

terespuwash 1y ago

So Adobe Stock (Photos) has no problem selling images staging visual tropes in global health (suffering subject and white saviour tropes) instead of decolonising their imagery and participating in a more equal postcolonial societies. Money is obviously more important to them than a basic human right such as a respectful and sensitive depiction of people.

Nasrudith 1y ago
Why is it that anybody who uses the word "decolonizing" or some variant of it just seems to think doing racism again but from "the oppressed" and then Orwellianly gussying it up in academic pseudo-intellwwhere is the answer to everything? I have seen them unironically suggest race-limited elections as the proper way to do referendums. While dehumanizing people as "colonizers", charging them with the sins of their forefathers, and promoting ethnic cleansing. Can you even actually define what the actual fuck you would change in the imagery in this context of soliciting donations from largely white people? Goddamn right it is about money! Money marshalls the resources which can help people. This is kindergarten level comprehension about what charity is and why they want money. Don't talk to about human rights when you expand them so frivolously, and yet show a clear disregard for the effect on outcome of actual people in favor of scoring ideological correctness points. Only somebody incredibly privileged would have such skewed priorities.

oulipo2 1y ago

There's a lot of weird stuff being pushed by the "algorithms" (I have a hard time believing this is not done on purpose by Meta) On Facebook I have REGULARLY a lot of "soft porn" AI generated "reels" of very young women (think: Donold Trump favorite age) moving lascively, or AI slop videos of "fake outrage situation" meant to be viral and shared, to make people more and more angry This is really a stupid use of CO2, of the attention of people, and that's despicable. I condemn people working in the industry allowing to do this

A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 1y ago

I was thinking about it, because wife was telling me story from work, where a woman was scammed with AI generated stuff and her colleague was a little too nonchalant about it ( 'it is on her to do her due diligence' ). And it made me annoyed. How can you possibly make due diligence when everyone around you is incentivized to lie? We do have a concept of fraud, but advertising seems to be able to move around its edges. I do get the why. Money talks and whatnot, but we are getting to the point where trust is becoming a hot commodity and that is not good. And all this before we get to the idea that it actually managed to desensitize people even further.

Nextgrid 1y ago
> We do have a concept of fraud We only do have such a concept when it's about an individual lying to a company for profit. When companies lie to individuals it's just business as usual, or worst-case scenario a "mistake" that the company pinky-promises will not happen again.
- janwl 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - gaul_bladder 1y ago
    [dead]
DiabloD3 1y ago
TBF, I just assume everyone is lying (either first hand or second) and its on them to prove to me they're not. Hasn't failed me yet.
- A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 1y ago
  I honestly hate that idea. I am slowly adjusting, but I got used to the idea that you can at least trust the other party not to outright lie ( although I was already expected omission, and other 'normal selling tactics' ). I posit that what we need is heavily enforced truth in advertising laws.

ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago

I’m old enough to remember the Sally Struthers ads… I suspect that we’ll be seeing AI-generated images of everything (including product shots), soon. I’ll bet the biggest driver, will be that there won’t be any issues with provenance. I occasionally get attempts at “extortion,” with my sites, where they try to claim an image in my postings is pirated (I always make sure of provenance —I used to work for a photography company). If everyone uses AI-generated, that’s going to be a tougher task for the scammers. Not sure if “AI-enhanced” will become more common for this kind of thing, though.

louthy 1y ago
> I’m old enough to remember the Sally Struthers ads… I’m old enough to remember when South Park took the piss out of Sally Struthers. I have no idea who Sally Struthers is and I’ve never seen any of the adverts.
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y ago
  She was fairly big, in the 1970s (I’m old). She played Archie Bunker’s daughter, in All in the Family. Famous for her “whining” ads: https://youtu.be/bGTEKWRLJuQ https://youtu.be/bGTEKWRLJuQ In some of them, she would be walking around in a destitute village, looking disgusted. Terrible ads.
  - louthy 1y ago
    I’m old enough, just not from the US. > She was fairly big According to South Park, that’s true. With her ending up looking like Jabba the Hut in a later episode!
guerrilla 1y ago
> I suspect that we’ll be seeing AI-generated images of everything (including product shots), soon. This is already a thing. There are high-quality tools specifically for it. I saw a video from a photographer who works in that industry and his opinion is that their jobs are over and they need to prepare to do something else.

Muromec 1y ago

Just a reminder, that Red Cross (for example) uses whatever current catastrophe or war to raise donations even if they don't actually do anything there, don't have access, or do pure stunts like partnership with coca-cola to truck bottled water to a city on a river with functioning tap water system. Don't blindly throw money to feel good when people who you this kind of ads, check what they actually do.

cantor_S_drug 1y ago

Another factor: getting real shots is too expensive. After all, it's the intentions that matter.

philipallstar 1y ago

> “It saddens me that the fight for more ethical representation of people experiencing poverty now extends to the unreal,” she said. This is an odd way of saying "people aren't aware of poverty amongst white people".

floundy 1y ago
[flagged]
- philipallstar 1y ago
  How's it a wild leap?
- Muromec 1y ago
  Gatekeeping from an account created less than 10 years ago? Wild!
- amanaplanacanal 1y ago
  "Go back to Reddit" isn't really advancing the conversation here.
Hilift 1y ago
Countries providing much of the foreign aid are sometimes in denial of poverty in their own country. The UK is projecting 22% in 2024/25 to 23% in 2029/30. Bangladeshi and Pakistani households are 53% and 47%. Families with three or more children 44%. https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn07096/ https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn07...
- philipallstar 1y ago
  Agreed - Appalachia in the US has very high poverty rates, and it's definitely not a part of the national conversation on poverty. For obvious reasons.

robin_reala 1y ago

The reasonable solution to this is to legally require every single image and video (or at least those used in commercial / charitable / public sector / journalistic settings) to be marked with a flag indicating the level of amendment. If it’s untouched apart from cropping / colour grading etc no mark needed. If it’s had some touch-up work require that to be flagged at minimum in the image metadata. And if large chunks or all of it has been imagined by an AI, require a visible watermark along with metadata tagging. Yes, this would require government regulation. That’s a good thing here, and is what regulation should be used for: requiring the things that the market won’t adjust for.

sofixa 1y ago
This is already the law in France. It was mostly originally intended to combat unrealistic e.g. beauty standards in ads, to make it clear that this is not what a human looks naturally, but it was edited. However the law predates widespread use of AI images everywhere, and I'm not sure that it applies the way it is written.
carlosjobim 1y ago
Unfortunately for you, "the government" is not an almighty and all-seeing god, even though hackers worship the government in such a way. Thus those regulations and solutions you are calling for are simply impossible and it won't matter how much money and prayers you send to the government. It won't change reality.
- AppleBananaPie 1y ago
  I'm probably misunderstanding because this seems bad faith. Isn't it obvious the government isn't an all seeing god? All regulations are imperfectly written and imperfectly enforced but many seem to have impact. I'm not sure if regulating this is feasible or not but it's not immediately obvious it's impossible to some extent.
  - carlosjobim 1y ago
    It's become a trope of HN that the first, second or third top-level comment for any and every subject will be somebody calling for government regulations. In this case, it's calling for government regulations to make sure that people do not lie. Good luck with that, I say. Those are regulations which will be guaranteed to be imperfectly written and imperfectly enforced, and smart people - like the commenter I replied to - should understand that. Unless you are of the faith that "the government" is an almighty and all-seeing god, which to be fair is what many people think and why government worship is the largest religion on the planet right now. Both in devotion of the believers, in tithes paid, and in willingness to kill for and die for the faith. What will happen in reality if the government regulates picture veracity like suggested is this: - Any pictures (real or manipulated or generated) which are in line with government policies and ideology will be marked as 100% true, real and verified. - All pictures (real or manipulated or generated) which go against government policies and ideology will be marked as 100% fake and lies.

resoluteteeth 1y ago

One thing that's interesting to me is that a lot of the ai-generated images shown in the screenshot of the stock image site seem like they are emulating the style of national geographic photographer Steve McCurry who has had some controversy due to editing his images and also allegedly has staged images (which is something that you aren't supposed to do for documentary photography), and also I think has been criticized as feeding into stereotypes about different places. So it's like there is a certain genre of photograph that is what people have come to associate with poverty in developing countries that may not be realistic in the first place, and then as an additional level of detachment from reality, ai is then reproducing the conventions of that genre without even involving real people or places.

Igrom 1y ago
Well said. I have always tried to understand Baudrillard's process of formation of the simulacrum. Only it's a pity that we are no longer content with reimagining mint chocolate or pumpkin spice, now it's time to stereotypize real destitution and sorrow. Anyway, who will want to continue to fork out money over fraudulent images of victims? How can I know that this or that agency represents actual people in need? In Zurich, an Oktoberfest-related festival (Zuri-Wiesn) held inside a large tent-like structure put up within the main train station's main hall has recently concluded. On the outside, on both sides, the tent was adorned with large-format prints of vaguely Germanic rural folk in celebratory garments holding up their pint. All generated! Blurry facial features, malformed metal buttons. I'd argue that already damaged the joviality and earnestness of the event. And that's just beer...

Alex-C137 1y ago

“They are so racialised. They should never even let those be published because it’s like the worst stereotypes about Africa, or India, or you name it,” said Alenichev. This is a problem and always has been with AI, people have been saying this for at least a decade at this point. Type in "photorealistic picture of child in refugee camp" in any AI that lets you.

guerrilla 1y ago
Isn't it just probabilistic? That's who's most likely in poor and/or in refugee camps.
- jncfhnb 1y ago
  50,000 ft priors on probability don’t extend to good perspectives on specific settings
  - guerrilla 1y ago
    I don't know what this means.
    - jncfhnb 1y ago
      Citing that the average poor person is, say, African, is not useful when discussing a specific poor area in, say, Asia.
      - guerrilla 1y ago
        I still don't understand what you're trying to say. What I was saying is if you ask an LLM to generate an image of a poor person, it makes sense they'd be brown or black because if you were to randomly pick actual poor people from Earth, the chances are very high it'd be a brown or black person. In this case, it's just accurate representation.
        1y ago

Flamingoat 1y ago

This tactic is often used to get attention. There was outrage about this in the late 2000s when reality TV/talk show series followed people in a particular poverty stricken area in the UK. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benefits_Street https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benefits_Street https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jeremy_Kyle_Show https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jeremy_Kyle_Show https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5455122 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5455122 I remember thinking at the time that these were quite exploitative.

phkahler 1y ago

I've always hated when even real images are used to promote something, but the image is unrelated. Example: a horrific image of a smashed car to show the result of drunk driving or phone use but where that wasn't the actual cause of the crash in the picture. Claiming "this is a result of xxx" is a lie. There are plenty of real cases out there so if you're making stuff I can't trust you - particularly for those asking for donations. So now they use AI imagining stuff...

dahart 1y ago
Like, I agree, but at some level I’d actually rather see a fake picture of a drunk driving crash (or no picture) and know this is what the aftermath might look like but nobody died in this particular shot. For drunk driving in particular, the pictures typically come from the police and aren’t exposed or composed with an artistic purpose. The opposite is true for a bunch of the famous pictures of poverty; these are composed for their (often powerful) emotional effect. Whether it’s a good thing or not, I can imagine that being able to add a little of the art direction after the fact to drunk driving photos might be tempting, i.e., having some control over angle & exposure, and maybe avoid gore in the shot…
wmeredith 1y ago
"If your'e making stuff up I can't trust you - particularly for those asking for donations" Exactly. AI doesn't have much to do with it other than it makes it easier to make stuff up. Someone using AI images to solicit donations is just grifting like any other liar asking people for money.

jstummbillig 1y ago

Ughhh... really, "poverty porn"? So it's a problem when aid agencies competing for resources towards a mostly sensible goal do it – but when everyone else fakes images, it's not, because... we didn't expect decent behavior anyway? Fantastic.

jncfhnb 1y ago
Nobody is saying it’s broadly ok to fake images otherwise. It’s pretty fucked up to, say, inject tragedy into narratives by showing victims as emancipated when they’re not. Or altering racial profiles to fit a narrative. It may not pop out as particularly noteworthy in a new age of fake imagery though.
- YarickR2 1y ago
  s/emancipated/emaciated/ ?
  - jncfhnb 1y ago
    Autocorrect, yes.
- jstummbillig 1y ago
  > Nobody is saying it’s broadly ok to fake images otherwise. Broadly everyone is saying that? I don't see any major movement shaming or suing the advertising industry into the ground, over obviously shopped images and videos.
solumunus 1y ago
Not sure where you’re seeing that. There’s criticism of people using fake AI content all over the place, for all sorts of reasons. Charity seems one of the more distasteful applications.
- jstummbillig 1y ago
  I don't understand what possible relevance AI could have in the purported context. Is it less of a problem if Nike or McDonald's hands a ton of cash to an ad agency who do fakery the expensive, old fashioned way?

jncfhnb 1y ago

I have suspected that I have seen some of these for Palestine in recent months. Not saying this has any implication on the broader reporting of it but… shit we’re really kind of screwed if media starts portraying everything via fictitious dramatization imagery. Especially on social media.

boxed 1y ago
That picture of the skeletal kid that went around shows they can spread some pretty wrogn ideas with real photos too. Context is everything.
- dgb23 1y ago
  If we're thinking of the same picture: That kid is real, it has a severe condition that needs medical attention. It's not the general case, but an extreme one, but that doesn't make the problems any less urgent.
  - readthenotes1 1y ago
    It was supposed to show the starvation affecting kids in Gaza though, right? I assume kids are starving there, but I have to wonder why the photographer picked a distortion and not a representative pic
    - I-M-S 1y ago
      A while ago I saw a photo of Nancy Pelosi on the Congress floor with a walker. I later learned the picture was deepfaked. But in a way it was more true than a real photograph.
  - boxed 1y ago
    Oh yea, it has a medical condition. That medical condition isn't starvation. That's a pretty important thing to notice.
Spivak 1y ago
Any news organization that does this deserves to burn, but I think it makes sense for aid organizations because they want to be able to portray the work they're doing / have done but might have some pause showing real people's faces while they're suffering. In a way a dramatization seems more "humane" and preserves the dignity of the individuals involved. I've run photos I've taken through AI so I could post pictures of myself without opening myself to being doxxed.

lnsru 1y ago

It’s really showing the real picture of all the aid agencies. They aim for your money. That’s the single purpose. Because they can’t provide photo documentation of they work on the site where apparently the aid happened. So sad. And many people fall for this scam.

palmotea 1y ago
> It’s really showing the real picture of all the aid agencies. They aim for your money. That’s the single purpose. There might be some like that, but not all. You can't paint with such an all-or-nothing brush. Be specific about the organizations you think are a "scam" and are only after "your money." > Because they can’t provide photo documentation of they work on the site where apparently the aid happened. So sad. And many people fall for this scam. You're putting too much faith in "photo documentation." A lot of stuff can't, or can't practically be documented with photos. I'd say the benefits of aid are one of those things. A picture of people distributing food from a truck? Could be a staged photo-op. And there's the issue of "poverty porn," where you take photos of someone's miserable situation so some better off people can gawk and judge.
conception 1y ago
It’s true, governments should have much more responsibility to provide aid internally and internationally so haphazard charity isn’t required for humans to take care of one another.
dahart 1y ago
Collecting money to use for providing aid is their stated purpose. When they provide aid, they are aiming for your money and it’s not a “scam”, both things can be true.
tgv 1y ago
What reason did you have to write that? The focus you put on "taking your money" in combination with "scam" suggest you think the aid is not real, or not merited.
- lnsru 1y ago

jchip303 1y ago

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gampleman 1y ago

I don't know how to feel about this entirely. Like I get the whole AI generated images bad angle, but on the other hand as someone running a charity I can see the benefit of not wasting donation money on sending a professional photographer to an actual slum and paying probably tens of thousands of dollars to get good quality photos and instead getting usable pictures for free-ish. When running a charity you need to spend money on things that aren't strictly the mission (such as fundraising) so that you can continue to operate, but every dollar that goes towards those activities is in a sense wasted. Knowing where investing is necessary and where to skimp is the essence of good charity management. I can't really see the argument that promotional photography wouldn't be the latter.

umvi 1y ago
If you don't get real photos though, how do you know you aren't misrepresenting the people you are aiding? You could very well be exaggerating their plight which will make your donors feel scammed if the truth comes out.
- gampleman 1y ago
  There's a world of difference between a smartphone snapped photo by a volunteer and what a professional photographer would produce. The first will give you a pretty good idea of what's going on, but will be completely unsuitable for what's effectively a display ad. For instance in the charity I run, we have about a thousand pictures of real operations taken by amateurs. For our posters we still prefer staged professional photos, since they look 100x better and communicate our message much more effectively. And yes, it does annoy me that this is the case, but again, the goal of my charity isn't to pursue truth in advertising, it's to achieve an actual goal (which is the goal people have already entrusted us with their real money, so one does have a healthy fear of wasting it). On a deeper level it's sort of like why paintings sometimes feel more true than photographs in the sense that they can communicate how we perceive a place and what it means to us in a way that a photo often cannot.
kedean 1y ago
Think about it from the perspective of a possible benefactor. If they're being lured in with these images at all, there's clearly an emotional element to it. If they start realizing the images weren't real at all, there's a very good chance they will stop donating because you have lied to them. The crux of their support was based on falsehoods. Personally, I'd prefer donating to an organization that isn't trying to use "sad" images to gut-punch me in the first place. There's a reason the "Arms Of An Angel" ASCPA ads are a laughingstock.

rdtsc 1y ago

> included AI-generated testimony from a Burundian woman describing being raped by three men and left to die in 1993 […] has been taken down, as we believed it shows improper use of AI, and may pose risks regarding information integrity It’s one thing to create an image but creating a whole fake testimony is even worse. Notice they just felt that the tool was evolving “too fast” and it didn’t feel real enough. Once the tool is better, they’ll have no issues with fake testimonies.

wmeredith 1y ago
MAY pose a risk to information integrity? That's a hot take. Any group's credibility is shot if they're fabricating testimonials, never mind that the subject matter is absolutely brutal, manipulative, and exploitive. The whole point of such a thing is to show create human connection to a real problem in the interest of motivating change. What utter bullshit. Take AI out of this story and pretend that you have groups making up stuff to solicit donations. It's fraud. The AI part just means it was easy to commit.

th2o2o3409980f 1y ago

PLAN International is egregious in doing this kind of stuff. I've never ever heard of this charity in India, but if you've been to Tokyo these guys have posters of like the worst stereotypes of India you can think of, in order to milk money. Gutter scum. These NGO scam-artists are half the reason these countries remain poor - it's in their interests that this doesn't change, which is why they NEVER advocate structural change. Eg. None of these people will talk about caste till the cows come home, but will not utter a single word against the systemic British era policies that exclude the majority of non-Anglophones out of education and ergo a way out of poverty. Almost like they want to ensure that colonial policies that suit them don't go against them.

stronglikedan 1y ago

Journalists have been manufacturing these types of pictures since the dawn of the camera. It's actually nice to see those unscrupulous types losing their jobs to AI.

tredre3 1y ago
Programmers have been manufacturing sloppy and dangerous code since the dawn of the computer. It's actually nice to see those unscrupulous types losing their jobs to AI.
GuinansEyebrows 1y ago
so we're left with the same result but sam altman gets to have more money? i don't see how that's better.

AHatLikeThat 1y ago

>While it is hard to quantify the prevalence of the AI-generated images, Alenichev and others say their use is on the rise, driven by concerns over consent and cost. Although I agree that using AI-generated poverty porn is repulsive on many levels, I think there is a valid consent and privacy issue if using actual photos of real people in these circumstances. A picture of a real person, especially a child who is being victimized by poverty and/or abuse is now being victimized twice. In this case, AI could be used judiciously to alter the persons face/body and other identifiers to protect their identity, in the same way that print journalism changes names and other identifiers in text. I think this would be ethical as long as properly marked as having been altered and why. Of course this does not address the motives of the company behind the ad, but it would at least provide increased transparency and privacy protections.

prosper0 1y ago

[flagged]

andy99 1y ago

This was published in 2019 Visualizing the Consequences of Climate Change Using [GANs] https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.03709 https://arxiv.org/abs/1905.03709 I always found it very hypocritical, the idea that deepfakes are ok if they mock up something we support. I generally don’t think it’s a big deal to make a synthetic image, just the double standard.

dahart 1y ago
There’s nothing wrong with using synthetic images when you say you’re using synthetic images. The issue is when synthetic images are implied or claimed to be real without disclosing the image provenance.

bradley13 1y ago

I'm sure that some (few) of these NGOs do good work. However, sooner or later, they all seem to succumb to two problems: (1) excessive staff costs, and (2) a failure of incentives. The second one is more insidious: If they solved the problem they address, they would no longer need to exist. They have no incentive to succeed. So they go around addressing individual problems, taking sad pictures, and avoid addressing systemic problems. And if the systemic problems are insoluble? Then there is again an argument that the NGO should not exist. If the problem is truly insoluble, then likely the money could be better spent elsewhere.

aredox 1y ago
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AuthAuth 1y ago
The issue is that their incentive is on marketing more than problem solving. A good NGO can blend actual solutions into snappy marketing campaigns. Like its expensive time/effort wise to push for legislative change on an issue but its "cheap" to throw a few grand at a group of down trodden people and take some photos.
rurp 1y ago
I don't think #2 really applies for many/most orgs, since so many causes don't really have a hard and fast solution, but instead exist on a spectrum. Think of a group trying to end poverty or protect nature. Those problems will never be truly solved but they can go much better or worse.
mleonhard 1y ago
I spent some years working for a large NGO (Opportunity International) and living with people who work for NGOs. NGOs must constantly raise money to fund their operations. The money that an NGO spends on fund-raising & administration is called "overhead". The percentage of annual revenue spent on overhead is the overhead percentage. Most NGOs publish this metric. When a big donor stops contributing, the NGO must cut pay or lay off people and cut projects. I've never heard of an NGO "succumbing to excessive staff costs" like a startup running out of money. Financial mismanagement does occasionally happen and boards do replace CEOs. Board members are mostly donors, so they tend to donate more to help the NGO recover from mismanagement, instead of walking away. NGOs pay less than other organizations, so they mostly attract workers who care about the NGO's mission. These are people with intrinsic motivation to make the NGO succeed in its mission. Financial incentives are a small part of their motivations. For example, my supervisor at Opportunity International refused several raises. > So they go around addressing individual problems, taking sad pictures, and avoid addressing systemic problems. Work on individual problems is valuable. For example, the Carter Center has prevented many millions of people from going blind from onchocerciasis and trachoma [0]. The Carter Center is not directly addressing the systemic problems of poverty and ineffective government health programs. That would take different expertise and different kinds of donors. The world is extremely complicated and interconnected. The Carter Center's work preventing blindness directly supports worker productivity in many poor countries. Productivity helps economic growth and reduces poverty. And with more resources, government health programs run better. Being effective in charity work requires humility and diligence to understand what can be done now, with the available resources. And then it requires tenacity to work in dangerous and backward places. It's an extremely hard job. People burn out. And we are all better off because of the work they do. When we ignore the value of work on individual problems, because it doesn't address systemic problems, we practice binary thinking [1]. It's good to avoid binary thinking. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carter_Center#Implementing_disease_control_and_treatment_measures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carter_Center#Implementing_dis... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splitting_(psychology) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splitting_(psychology)

Tycho 1y ago

I wonder what is the relative utility of giving donations to some charity that solicits them with ads or calls, vs just doing something obvious like writing a cheque to the local orphanage.

probably_wrong 1y ago
Thinking about it as "utility" is a cornerstone of effective altruists, so you're not alone in wondering that. From that point of view, for the price of one package of flour in Germany I can buy two in Uganda and four in Syria. Assuming that the charity keeps their costs low, writing a check to the local orphanage is a waste because you could be doing much more "good" somewhere else. But from another POV helping your local orphanage gives you a stronger bond to your local community and contributes to the well-being of the society you live in. By sending your help (aka, money) away you're essentially corroding the pillars holding the nice society you're living in.

autoexec 1y ago

I can understand that there are some good arguments for using AI generated pics. Using AI means not having to pay for photographers who'd either have to spend a lot of time taking or staging pictures, and not having to pay for their travel expenses which means that money can be spent on aid instead of marketing. Also it can feel a bit exploitative to photograph vulnerable people, especially children. As long as the images they end up with accurately reflect the situation on the ground and the use of AI is transparent it seems like a good idea to use AI for attention grabbing images and supplement with candid photos from aid workers who aren't professional photographers.

aethrum 1y ago
But its not... real.
wmeredith 1y ago
Take AI out of the conversation. Now revisit the argument that it's OK for people to make fake pics, testimonials, stories, and videos to solicit donations. I'm pretty sure that's just called a con or perhaps fraud in legal terms.
- autoexec 1y ago
  Would hand drawn illustrations of a starving child or a battered woman be fraud if they were used to help raise money that was going to feed actual starving children or help battered women?
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- ryandrake 1y ago
  The way I see it: What can I reasonably assume about "the situation on the ground" if you're giving me fake photographs? If an organization is willing to fake one thing, what aren't they willing to fake? Are they faking what they are doing with donation money, too? You have to assume yes if they're willing to fake other things.

consumer451 1y ago

Tangentially, I’ve been hoping someone starts talking about the AI testimonial advertisements I see for all kinds of things. In such ads, you can see entirely fabricated “people” talking about their amazing experiences with the product. Is that regulated at all? Should it be?

ryandrake 1y ago
"I'm a doctor and I recommend..." says the actor dressed up in surgical scrubs with a stethoscope draped around his neck.
- consumer451 1y ago
  Don't those ads always have some "actor" disclaimer? I have been blessed with a mostly ad-free life for years, so I may be off base here.

lunias 1y ago

So... the images used to be staged, but now they're generated? Seems like not much has changed and the onus still lies with the targeted to think critically about the motivation behind why they've been targeted. That being said, false advertising is a thing; and I think we need to enforce it in instances where people are clearly being misled intentionally.

AnimalMuppet 1y ago
Generating is much easier than staging. So we're going to see far more fake than we used to.
- lunias 1y ago
  This is true, but for the moment (big caveat - probably won't be this way forever) it's easier to distinguish the generated than the staged.

eth0up 1y ago

>>>How can you possibly make due diligence when everyone around you is incentivized to lie? Jolly doo wiggly jingle dee. This is actually the blueprint for society that I believe most of us are following to fine details. It's been largely rehearsal hitherto, but I do fear the show has begun and any moment now we'll have the doors to the theater welded shut and quite regardless of Amendments, someone's gonna yell fire, too late. And it'll get warm and fuzzy. My vigilance is unaffected by my absence of optimism and I hold tightly to my values with clean ears to listen to those of others; but here's a scary consideration: Those that are optimistic that this imminent hellscape can be managed tend to be either not very, or too intelligent. The intelligent ones forget in the bliss of creativity and grit that they are an extreme minority. They may see solutions everywhere, but if they were brave enough to stop and express this to random strangers, things wouldn't go well for long. In theory it could, but in practice wouldn't, and one would find the middle spectrum has been forged with indifference, hostility and abundantly rewarded for self-imposed ignorance and therefore has no time or patience to even hear. Although some might listen while staring at their phone, actual considerations would be outliers. This is getting worse, not better. The filter bubble has gone live. Future mitigation will be by necessity in accordance with public obtuseness. What of this mitigation that can be mustered will not be passive, nor pleasant, if any at all beyond headless self preservation. I foresee an inextricable mess, compounded by the winds of time which inevitably must change to carry back all the problems that for so long we have discarded into it. Environmental, social, fiduciary, tectonic, cosmi-oceanic - you name it - it's a big harsh universe and we've been taunting and shitting at it for too long. Fraud, my friend, is our new religion. Speak against it too loudly and you'll get one tall wooden leg with a nice perpendicular one to secure you high upon it.

aleph_minus_one 1y ago

Nothing new. Already in 1986, the band Chumbawamba published their debut album "Pictures of Starving Children Sell Records": > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chumbawamba https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chumbawamba > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pictures_of_Starving_Children_Sell_Records https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pictures_of_Starving_Children_... > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gt_ztOo9Kak https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gt_ztOo9Kak > https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_ljBD_smlWxwYsg9ZtnH6UT2IUMX6YJg00 https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_ljBD_smlWxwYsg...

kylecazar 1y ago

"Fairpicture, a Swiss-based organisation focused on promoting ethical imagery in global development." I wouldn't have assumed this is a problem someone's trying to solve, but I like it.

geldedus 1y ago

and MASSIVELY used by Russian propaganda in Western countries