AI is now making its way into the media surrounding the war in Iran. Since the start of the conflict between the United States and Iran on Feb. 28, the use of AI in warfare has increased.
Various videos and pictures recently arose on social media relevant to the Iran War, which have since been proven to be generated by AI. This uprising of false media is contributing to misleading information when it comes to national security and conflict.
“AI can be very harmful. There’s good sides and bad sides, but it’s causing too much damage,” sophomore Ani Aghakhanyan said.
A video surfaced of an Iranian attack hitting a skyscraper building in Bahrain. While buildings in Bahrain have been struck with missiles, this particular video was proven to be generated by AI.
Various aspects of the video proved it was not authentic, such as two cars stuck together, and a man whose elbow appeared to show straight through a backpack.
Another AI-generated picture gained public attention, showing Iranian soldiers seizing U.S. soldiers.
“I feel like the issue with AI is that it might not be able to correctly recognize things. Current generative AI models have a high rate of hallucination, which obviously would be bad if someone’s lives are in that,” sophomore Vin Scipione said.
The use of fake or AI-generated news in warfare arose in early 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine. Since then, AI has been used to create false media about soldiers, attacks, and various updates about the war.
While fake news in 2022 was most often media taken out of context, AI is now being used to generate false media. Considering the more advanced AI platforms, fake news is getting harder to detect.
“It’s definitely changing the media landscape. We’ve had this with the AI-generated brain rot or whatever changing the cultural landscape. And I think that this cultural thing is going to keep happening. I do think the recent backlash against AI, with people being very against it, is going to kind of mitigate this for a little bit,” Scipione said.
With the recent developments of current artificial intelligence, generated pictures or videos are higher quality, thoroughly detailed, with few noticeable mistakes.
“There’s obviously a huge flaw in AI media that is coming. I think one of the issues is going to be, once a bunch of AI generatives get good enough, it’s going to be much harder [to detect] photos that you find randomly,” Scipione said.
AI platforms are more accessible to the general public, making it easier for anyone to curate fake videos or pictures.
AI media can spread misinformation quickly, raising concerns within State High about the consequences. As AI platforms develop, the quality of AI-generated media increases, along with the scope of its availability.
