A faked image of an explosion near the Pentagon has again revealed the power of artificial intelligence-powered deception — and was enough to cause the stock market to dip briefly. On May 22, the now-suspended verified Twitter account “Bloomberg Feed” — pretending to be affiliated with the media conglomerate — shared the image reporting of a “large explosion” near the Pentagon, the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense. The fake report quickly gained traction and was shared by multiple media outlets, including the Russian-state controlled media outlet Russia Today to its 3 million Twitter followers and the Indian media outfit Republic to its 2.8 million Twitter followers. Both have since deleted their respective tweets regarding the story. Local authorities including the Pentagon Force Protection Agency, in charge of the building’s security, said they were aware of the circulating report and confirmed there was “no explosion or incident” taking place. Multiple Twitter users pointed to inconsistencies in the image that indicated it was AI-made, highlighting the building frontage wasn’t uniform, and two different fences shown in the image seemed to merge together.
Full story : AI-generated image of Pentagon explosion causes stock market stutter.