To the surprise of no one, the combination of paid blue checks and generative AI makes it very easy to spread misinformation. On Monday morning, a seemingly AI-generated image of an explosion at the Pentagon made the rounds on the internet, even though the event never happened.
For about half an hour, the image showed a verified Twitter account called “Bloomberg Feed,” which could easily be mistaken for a real Bloomberg-affiliated account, especially since it has a blue check. That account has been suspended. Russia’s state-controlled news network RT image was also shared, according to screenshots taken by users before the tweet was deleted. Many Twitter accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers, like DeItaone, OSINTdefender and Whale Chart it is shared. Even a Indian television network reported on the fake explosion at the Pentagon. It was not immediately clear where this fake image and news came from.
This is far from the first time a fake image has successfully fooled the internet, but the stakes are higher when the fake event is an explosion at a US government building, rather than the Pope wearing and a Balenciaga coat. Some reported that the fake image could be tied to a 25 basis point move in the S&P 500, but the slippage was short-lived, and there is no way to prove that it was a complete result of this hoax. . The incident begs the question of how generative AI could be used to play the stock market in the future – after all, Reddit did.
Misinformation is an issue as old as the internet, but the simultaneous growth of generative AI and changes to Twitter’s verification system make for more fertile ground. From the start, Twitter owner Elon Musk’s plan to remove the existing blue checks from their status and allow anyone to pay for the symbol has been a mess. Although we know that blue checks no longer indicate legitimacy, it is difficult to break the visual bond that you have developed for almost fifteen years: if you see an account called “Bloomberg Feed” with a blue check post about an attack on the Pentagon, you’re probably predisposed to think it’s real. As fake images become harder to spot, we will only continue to see fake news like this in the future.
