Of all the silly outcomes from recent AI development I was predicting, human rights organizations using fake AI generated images of injustice to manufacture emotionally driven support for them wasn't on the list. Excited to watch the next riots in the US be sparked from an AI generated video of _Racism_.
Amnesty International is primarily an advertisement and donation collection business. Most of your donations go straight into advertisements and collecting more donations. Collectors aren't volunteers but hired professional collection agencies/con-artists trained to guilt people out of their money.
AI using AI for misrepresentations fits my very low opinion of them.
These types of organizations have been faking images to gain sympathy since the dawn of photography, but now it just takes a person and a prompt, instead of an entire production team.
The captions make them worse somehow. Like the images are supposed to underscore the point, but then they're fake? Such a weird choice all around by Amnesty International.
Frankly I thought worse, based on the only image in the Guardian article. That first one can be mistaken for a real photo; the other two are very clearly illustrations. The caption makes things clear anyway, removing any suspicion of attempted deception. Still, not the best judgement.
The excuse is partially egregious, as if the mosaic filter doesn't exist. Can't shake the feeling the marketing team just didn't find any of the real images powerful enough. Probably had a bad conversion rate to donations in the focus group.
Surely a non-profit like this their number 1 priority should be accuracy and truth in the harm/crimes they are reporting. But nah its not about any of that is it.
> Surely a non-profit like this their number 1 priority should be accuracy and truth
I know a number of people in the non-profit space. Some acquire a belief that the end justifies the means, and therefore it’s okay to push the ethical limits as long as it’s for a good cause. They believe their own cause is good, naturally, so fundraising pushes can become a slippery slope of bending the rules.
Amnesty International accused Ukrainian armed forces of endangering Ukrainian civilians with their defense tactics. And then they (A.I.) covered up the report that found significant problems with their reasoning. So... no, they aren't very concerned with accuracy or truth.
I don't think that's remotely new. They were always a bit out there, and now hyperpartisans have taken oven even places like ACLU.
That said, I don't think this changes anything. Someone was a bit lazy or arguably over-dramatic. I don't see it as some egregious violation of public trust. Even with real pictures, they would have been cherry picked for effect.
It's always been a campaigning organisation. Supporting human rights has always been an immensely controversial position in many countries. Even the campaign to free Nelson Mandela wasn't universally popular at the time.
The thing is that, there's no way to defend human rights without it being "political" and seen as partisan. There are always powerful political forces not wanting to recognize human rights violations as human rights violations, or they wouldn't need organized opposition in the first place.
I'm pretty sure Amnesty International has been accused of being a partisan political movement for as long as it's existed, by those who don't like what it's critisizing.
The article you link seems to be criticizing it for their criticism of Ukraine for human rights abuses. It has been documenting what has been happening in Ukraine for a long time, in the Donbas and Luhansk regions. It has significantly reduced it in the past few years.
It's a faux agency used for corrupt western influence in the guise of "human rights". India banned it for good reasons.
This makes me think interns or other low paid, less seasoned staff are writing these articles and opted to just gen up an image rather than have no image, or use an internal image bank or purchase an actual picture or actually have photographers covering the event.
Has a definite “only write what I can google” vibe to it and is not acceptable for such a well funded organization.
A good rule of thumb is that people or institutions fabricate evidence because they are making claims that are both false and harmful.
Another good rule of thumb is that the evidence which is proven to be fabricated is not the only evidence that was fabricated, and not the only situation in which it was.
We rely a great deal on “appeal to authority”, this organization being one of them. The epistemology of a lot of common belief breaks down very quickly once you start to see this. But if it goes too far, once the broken belief system affects the identity of the beholder, it reverts to blind faith and anger. We have a lot of Tooth Faries forced into our collective identity by school teachers.
An unfortunate corollary is the ability of an organization to poison a shared well.
I have a lot of sympathy for the local folks in dangerous situations who took real risks to contribute to Amnesty reports. Amnesty's actions unfairly devalue their work.
Amnesty claims that it used the AI-generated images to protect the protesters, but since they risked their lives to protest in the streets in the first place, will they really thank Amnesty for saving their lives?
Yes they would. One of the protesters even talked about this in the article.
> Gareth Sella was blinded in his left eye when a police officer in Bogotá shot him with a rubber bullet at the protests. He argued that hiding the identity of protesters makes sense to protect them from ending up in jail on inflated charges. “As the UN has documented, the state has continued pursuing protesters and more than 100 are in jail, many with disproportionate sentences, such as terrorism, to make an example of them. Hiding our identities seems sensible to me given that two years on we continue living in the fear that we could be jailed at any moment or even that they come after us on the streets,” Sella said.
People in first world countries often underestimate just how dangerous political protests are in other parts of the world. It's not just about getting arrested or injured at the event itself, but about being identified and targeted many weeks afterwards. The protesters are certainly willing to risk a lot, but they are taking every step possible to not martyr themselves.
Amnesty International requested the freedom of a criminal who stole millions of dollars from poor people, originally meant for social housing. Milagros Sala, found guilty. That organization is a joke.
Honestly... those images are openly marked as generated. I don't see too much trouble with this. If they tried to pretend they're real, that would be totally fucked up, yes.
Hum... They should have made the caption larger. And everything around it would be better if they made them a sketch or any kind of impressionist transformation.
But yeah, it's a hole bunch of nothing here. Nobody was lying or trying to mislead.
> To avoid misleading the public, the images included text stating that they were produced by AI.
So doesn’t this really only impact the people… careless enough not to RTFA?
And then we get this hackneyed parting shot, parroting common myth/misconception about AI generated images:
> AI-generated images stitch together photographs previously taken by humans to create new ones…
Which, no, that makes it sounds like a collage,
> …raising questions of plagiarism and in photojournalism and the industry’s future. Torres said Amnesty’s use of AI images was an insult to the photojournalists who cover protests from the frontline.
“Won’t someone please think of the photojournalists!”
I wonder why they would opt to use fake generated images while real suffering in the world on these issues is very documented in form of horrible images already. Isn't that already enough for them?
I can't imagine how anyone working for Amnesty International could not have realized what a terrible idea this is. It makes me lose a lot of respect for the organization, such bad judgement.
I lost respect from Amnesty International after they denounced the President of El Salvador for the mass arrests and detention of gang members. They said they were guilty of "massive human rights violations" and said the president "engulf[ed] the country in a human rights crisis."
Which... sure, there might be human rights violations, I don't necessarily doubt there are innocent people caught in the crossfire. However, what they don't mention was that El Salvador had a murder rate as high as 103 per 100K in 2015, the highest murder rate in the world by country by almost double the next highest. Is that not a human rights crisis worth mentioning? It was so bad that BBC reporters were seeing dead bodies in the streets.
After the crackdowns (and, if you watch El Salvador's video, easily 90%+ of prisoners in their TCC have visible gang tattoos on them), they are now sitting at a murder rate of 8 per 100K. Not surprisingly, the president has a 90%+ approval rate.
That's what I don't get Amnesty International. From 103 to 8 per 100K. Thousands and thousands of lives will be saved every year. Is that worth the risk of a some innocent people with obvious gang tattoos being swept up in it? I'd say... yes, because we don't live in a perfect world, and El Salvador was quite literally in a state of war. But Amnesty International is more focused on their story than the people who obtained freedom from having to live in one of the most dangerous countries on earth. Think only about potential innocent victims in prison, but the 6,500 people who were murdered in a single year shouldn't be considered victims in the equation. I think it's pretty reasonable to say that, if there is a crackdown that arrests 60,000 (alleged) gang members, and has (let's say, hypothetically) 5,000 people innocent arrested (which, from the video, I think is high, but let's just say), but results in over 6,500+ lives saved every year (let alone countless rapes including of children and other crimes), there's a just cause.
I would have had much more respect for them, and I think the people of El Salvador would have had more respect for them, if they had accepted the crackdowns as a necessary evil under desperate circumstances; and then worked to identify and free anyone incorrectly swept up in the arrests. They could have done that - they could have started working hard to free the actually innocent, on a case-by-case basis. Instead they just denounced the whole thing... which, surprise, hasn't done anything. It definitely makes them feel good, even if it does literally nothing.
It seems kinda obvious why a human rights organization isn't signing up for your "but is it really so bad if we ignore the human rights of people we say are criminals? What's a little torture if its criminals?" line, but instead calls out human rights violations.
I once volunteered as a special advocate for foster children, and went through 3 months of training. During training, I saw numerous PR/awareness/fundraising posters about the work that the organization was doing. Given that this was a program focused on foster-children, the posters featured numerous children. At the end of the training, I was told that for privacy reasons, pictures should never ever be posted publicly (social media etc) of any foster child that identifies them as a foster child. Notably, this policy applied even to the organization's own posters. Not a single child in their poster is a foster child - that would have violated their privacy policy. The children in all their posters are just random kids.
We all laughed when we learnt this, but didn't think it was a big deal. Their privacy policy makes a ton of sense - if I was a foster child, I wouldn't want that to be advertised publicly. And the organization would have hamstrung itself if none of their posters featured any children. People don't donate or volunteer based on facts and logic. They do it based on empathy. Not having children's pictures at all, or only blurred photos, would be disastrous for fundraising and getting the foster children their much needed resources.
To be clear, I do not endorse lying at all. Lying makes things much worse in the long run. But the above non-profit wasn't lying in any sense. They simply showed photos of average looking kids in neutral settings, displaying neutral expressions. There was no misinformation in any of their photos. I haven't met a single donor to date who felt lied to or betrayed by their posters.
I can see the parallels between what Amnesty Intl did and the above. They have a very credible reason for not using real photos. The people protesting themselves have requested hiding their identities to avoid life-changing persecution. And Amnesty states that they explicitly labelled their images as having been produced by AI. They have clearly been acting in good faith.
In an ideal world, non-profits wouldn't need to rely on AI generated images... and people wouldn't require pictures to mobilize and get involved. But let's be realistic - there's minimal rationality in people's engagement with non-profits. I skim through the news everyday, and didn't even know there were protests happening in Colombia. The only possible way for organizations like Amnesty International to get their message out there is by using attention-grabbing images. And as long as they make a good faith effort to portray them realistically and label their images as AI-generated, I don't have a problem with it.
> To avoid misleading the public, the images included text stating that they were produced by AI.
> Gareth Sella was blinded in his left eye when a police officer in Bogotá shot him with a rubber bullet at the protests. He argued that hiding the identity of protesters makes sense to protect them from ending up in jail on inflated charges. “As the UN has documented, the state has continued pursuing protesters and more than 100 are in jail, many with disproportionate sentences, such as terrorism, to make an example of them. Hiding our identities seems sensible to me given that two years on we continue living in the fear that we could be jailed at any moment or even that they come after us on the streets,” Sella said.
It's good to hear this perspective, thanks for sharing it.
One difference is that there is no controversy over whether foster children exist. And, as you say, they used neutral pictures of kids with neutral expressions -- what if they had instead used (staged) photos of kids in distress, to get more sympathy? (And still, nobody denies that foster kids in distress exist, but this already seems questionable, right?)
The things Amnesty highlights, some people want to challenge the fact that they happened, that they even exist, or happened like Amnesty said, or were as bad as Amnesty said. Credibility as being honest and accurate in reporting on what happened is pretty crucial to Amnesty's ability to succeed at it's goals.
But perhaps the Amnesty staffers were thinking about it like you, and that it was the same. I don't think it is, at all.
Certainly they have no obligation to put people at risk by including pictures in which people can be identified. There are many options that are not using manufactured pictures, including pictures without visible faces or obscuring faces. Using real-looking but manufactured/staged pictures is a really bad choice. Even if it would get more attention or dollars or support than other choices, the consequences are disastrous for Amnesty's credibility at exposing things that some forces want to say didn't happen or weren't as bad as Amnesty says.
[+] [-] boredumb|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] awaythrow98765|2 years ago|reply
AI using AI for misrepresentations fits my very low opinion of them.
[+] [-] amtamt|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stronglikedan|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] seanmcdirmid|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] johnyzee|2 years ago|reply
The captions make them worse somehow. Like the images are supposed to underscore the point, but then they're fake? Such a weird choice all around by Amnesty International.
[+] [-] e12e|2 years ago|reply
> I used to donate money every year to AI but will never do in future.
Took me a moment to parse AI as Amnesty International...
[+] [-] bawolff|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Am4TIfIsER0ppos|2 years ago|reply
Also
> insulted women
The highest crime!
[EDIT] Archive of guardian link https://archive.is/4RSIb
[+] [-] throw310822|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] whywhywhywhy|2 years ago|reply
Surely a non-profit like this their number 1 priority should be accuracy and truth in the harm/crimes they are reporting. But nah its not about any of that is it.
[+] [-] PragmaticPulp|2 years ago|reply
I know a number of people in the non-profit space. Some acquire a belief that the end justifies the means, and therefore it’s okay to push the ethical limits as long as it’s for a good cause. They believe their own cause is good, naturally, so fundraising pushes can become a slippery slope of bending the rules.
[+] [-] jskrablin|2 years ago|reply
https://eeditionnytimes.pressreader.com/article/281814288181...
[+] [-] BurningFrog|2 years ago|reply
Thay the money goes to employees rather than shareholders is at least as motivating.
[+] [-] jack_riminton|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] version_five|2 years ago|reply
That said, I don't think this changes anything. Someone was a bit lazy or arguably over-dramatic. I don't see it as some egregious violation of public trust. Even with real pictures, they would have been cherry picked for effect.
[+] [-] Workaccount2|2 years ago|reply
"I wish had I known that the people fighting the power were actually just fighting for the power."
[+] [-] pjc50|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] johngladtj|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jrochkind1|2 years ago|reply
I'm pretty sure Amnesty International has been accused of being a partisan political movement for as long as it's existed, by those who don't like what it's critisizing.
[+] [-] easytiger|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fafzv|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] DuckFeathers|2 years ago|reply
It's a faux agency used for corrupt western influence in the guise of "human rights". India banned it for good reasons.
[+] [-] prepend|2 years ago|reply
Has a definite “only write what I can google” vibe to it and is not acceptable for such a well funded organization.
[+] [-] jl2718|2 years ago|reply
Another good rule of thumb is that the evidence which is proven to be fabricated is not the only evidence that was fabricated, and not the only situation in which it was.
We rely a great deal on “appeal to authority”, this organization being one of them. The epistemology of a lot of common belief breaks down very quickly once you start to see this. But if it goes too far, once the broken belief system affects the identity of the beholder, it reverts to blind faith and anger. We have a lot of Tooth Faries forced into our collective identity by school teachers.
[+] [-] iudqnolq|2 years ago|reply
I have a lot of sympathy for the local folks in dangerous situations who took real risks to contribute to Amnesty reports. Amnesty's actions unfairly devalue their work.
[+] [-] bawolff|2 years ago|reply
Another good rule of thumb is to assume stupidity not malice.
Ultimately rules of thumbs are just that, and shouldn't be over relied on for things that matter.
[+] [-] AraceliHarker|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] whack|2 years ago|reply
> Gareth Sella was blinded in his left eye when a police officer in Bogotá shot him with a rubber bullet at the protests. He argued that hiding the identity of protesters makes sense to protect them from ending up in jail on inflated charges. “As the UN has documented, the state has continued pursuing protesters and more than 100 are in jail, many with disproportionate sentences, such as terrorism, to make an example of them. Hiding our identities seems sensible to me given that two years on we continue living in the fear that we could be jailed at any moment or even that they come after us on the streets,” Sella said.
People in first world countries often underestimate just how dangerous political protests are in other parts of the world. It's not just about getting arrested or injured at the event itself, but about being identified and targeted many weeks afterwards. The protesters are certainly willing to risk a lot, but they are taking every step possible to not martyr themselves.
[+] [-] camillomiller|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] frankreyes|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] muhehe|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] psiops|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marcosdumay|2 years ago|reply
But yeah, it's a hole bunch of nothing here. Nobody was lying or trying to mislead.
[+] [-] KingOfCoders|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mock-possum|2 years ago|reply
> To avoid misleading the public, the images included text stating that they were produced by AI.
So doesn’t this really only impact the people… careless enough not to RTFA?
And then we get this hackneyed parting shot, parroting common myth/misconception about AI generated images:
> AI-generated images stitch together photographs previously taken by humans to create new ones…
Which, no, that makes it sounds like a collage,
> …raising questions of plagiarism and in photojournalism and the industry’s future. Torres said Amnesty’s use of AI images was an insult to the photojournalists who cover protests from the frontline.
“Won’t someone please think of the photojournalists!”
I am not impressed with this article.
[+] [-] elashri|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] beardyw|2 years ago|reply
It seems to me that if this were an illustration by an artist no one would care. So it seems to me they should just use "in the style of".
[+] [-] jrochkind1|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gjsman-1000|2 years ago|reply
Which... sure, there might be human rights violations, I don't necessarily doubt there are innocent people caught in the crossfire. However, what they don't mention was that El Salvador had a murder rate as high as 103 per 100K in 2015, the highest murder rate in the world by country by almost double the next highest. Is that not a human rights crisis worth mentioning? It was so bad that BBC reporters were seeing dead bodies in the streets.
After the crackdowns (and, if you watch El Salvador's video, easily 90%+ of prisoners in their TCC have visible gang tattoos on them), they are now sitting at a murder rate of 8 per 100K. Not surprisingly, the president has a 90%+ approval rate.
That's what I don't get Amnesty International. From 103 to 8 per 100K. Thousands and thousands of lives will be saved every year. Is that worth the risk of a some innocent people with obvious gang tattoos being swept up in it? I'd say... yes, because we don't live in a perfect world, and El Salvador was quite literally in a state of war. But Amnesty International is more focused on their story than the people who obtained freedom from having to live in one of the most dangerous countries on earth. Think only about potential innocent victims in prison, but the 6,500 people who were murdered in a single year shouldn't be considered victims in the equation. I think it's pretty reasonable to say that, if there is a crackdown that arrests 60,000 (alleged) gang members, and has (let's say, hypothetically) 5,000 people innocent arrested (which, from the video, I think is high, but let's just say), but results in over 6,500+ lives saved every year (let alone countless rapes including of children and other crimes), there's a just cause.
I would have had much more respect for them, and I think the people of El Salvador would have had more respect for them, if they had accepted the crackdowns as a necessary evil under desperate circumstances; and then worked to identify and free anyone incorrectly swept up in the arrests. They could have done that - they could have started working hard to free the actually innocent, on a case-by-case basis. Instead they just denounced the whole thing... which, surprise, hasn't done anything. It definitely makes them feel good, even if it does literally nothing.
[+] [-] detaro|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] whack|2 years ago|reply
We all laughed when we learnt this, but didn't think it was a big deal. Their privacy policy makes a ton of sense - if I was a foster child, I wouldn't want that to be advertised publicly. And the organization would have hamstrung itself if none of their posters featured any children. People don't donate or volunteer based on facts and logic. They do it based on empathy. Not having children's pictures at all, or only blurred photos, would be disastrous for fundraising and getting the foster children their much needed resources.
To be clear, I do not endorse lying at all. Lying makes things much worse in the long run. But the above non-profit wasn't lying in any sense. They simply showed photos of average looking kids in neutral settings, displaying neutral expressions. There was no misinformation in any of their photos. I haven't met a single donor to date who felt lied to or betrayed by their posters.
I can see the parallels between what Amnesty Intl did and the above. They have a very credible reason for not using real photos. The people protesting themselves have requested hiding their identities to avoid life-changing persecution. And Amnesty states that they explicitly labelled their images as having been produced by AI. They have clearly been acting in good faith.
In an ideal world, non-profits wouldn't need to rely on AI generated images... and people wouldn't require pictures to mobilize and get involved. But let's be realistic - there's minimal rationality in people's engagement with non-profits. I skim through the news everyday, and didn't even know there were protests happening in Colombia. The only possible way for organizations like Amnesty International to get their message out there is by using attention-grabbing images. And as long as they make a good faith effort to portray them realistically and label their images as AI-generated, I don't have a problem with it.
> To avoid misleading the public, the images included text stating that they were produced by AI.
> Gareth Sella was blinded in his left eye when a police officer in Bogotá shot him with a rubber bullet at the protests. He argued that hiding the identity of protesters makes sense to protect them from ending up in jail on inflated charges. “As the UN has documented, the state has continued pursuing protesters and more than 100 are in jail, many with disproportionate sentences, such as terrorism, to make an example of them. Hiding our identities seems sensible to me given that two years on we continue living in the fear that we could be jailed at any moment or even that they come after us on the streets,” Sella said.
[+] [-] jrochkind1|2 years ago|reply
One difference is that there is no controversy over whether foster children exist. And, as you say, they used neutral pictures of kids with neutral expressions -- what if they had instead used (staged) photos of kids in distress, to get more sympathy? (And still, nobody denies that foster kids in distress exist, but this already seems questionable, right?)
The things Amnesty highlights, some people want to challenge the fact that they happened, that they even exist, or happened like Amnesty said, or were as bad as Amnesty said. Credibility as being honest and accurate in reporting on what happened is pretty crucial to Amnesty's ability to succeed at it's goals.
But perhaps the Amnesty staffers were thinking about it like you, and that it was the same. I don't think it is, at all.
Certainly they have no obligation to put people at risk by including pictures in which people can be identified. There are many options that are not using manufactured pictures, including pictures without visible faces or obscuring faces. Using real-looking but manufactured/staged pictures is a really bad choice. Even if it would get more attention or dollars or support than other choices, the consequences are disastrous for Amnesty's credibility at exposing things that some forces want to say didn't happen or weren't as bad as Amnesty says.
[+] [-] ndsipa_pomu|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] camillomiller|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sylware|2 years ago|reply
This is high-school skill, don't be fooled.