- It’s sad to see AI-generated images overloading Facebook with real people engaging.
- Last week, researchers wrote about a page that posts this garbage. They discovered rampant bad behavior.
- Please forgive me, Ebi-Jesus.
My pastor has never talked to me about Jesus like I see on Facebook these days. A baby surrounded by three-armed fairies and candles (bad parenting, Joseph). A cross worshiped by flight attendants on their knees around the pool.
These images of Jesus are the kind of images generated by artificial intelligence that are overwhelming Facebook and making the social media site even more depressing.
I’m one of the few millennials who uses Facebook regularly. Its main purpose is to make friends in expat groups and furnish new apartments via the marketplace (the only good part of the site). I enjoy laughing at things like Ebi-Jesus, but I’m wary of the engagement I’m seeing on these posts and what it portends for the future of social media.
A few years ago, Facebook laid the foundation for today’s AI trash by deprioritizing content from legitimate sources like news organizations in favor of posts from family and friends. “We feel a responsibility to make our services not only fun to use, but also good for people’s health,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote when announcing the changes in 2018.
But aside from a few older relatives and college acquaintances, no one I know posts much. Instead, my feed is a mix of group posts, ads, and strange AI images. In my case, it’s mostly fake homes and resorts, probably because I belong to several travel groups.
The comment section there Images are where things get dark.
Scammers and real people trying to sell cryptocurrencies comment on these photos. While the former is to be expected in any online forum, the latter is a sad reflection of low media literacy, something researchers are beginning to realize.
Last week, a duo from Stanford University and Georgetown University published a paper (not yet peer-reviewed) on AI images on Facebook, after studying 120 Facebook pages through early March. They write that AI-generated images are shown because Facebook’s algorithms think it will lead to more engagement, and that some of the posts they tracked actually went viral. .
Unsurprisingly, the researchers found that some people engaging with this content do not seem to be aware that it is generated by AI, and that some of the people behind these pages I discovered that the group wasn’t doing much good. The researchers wrote that some page operators engaged in “overt manipulative behavior” such as stealing pages and adding fake followers to boost their own status.
The Thank You Jesus page from which I sourced the visuals for this story is exactly the same as the one researchers discovered. The original owner told me that the page was originally intended to feature local musicians, but was hacked in January 2023.
After the takeover, the page began reposting religious images of Boomers (think prayers in Comic Sans font over gross clip art) that had been circulating on Facebook for a long time. These images are from another page called VFit Athlete, an Indiana-based gym that the owner told me was also hacked and has since pivoted to AI Jesus. Between these pages he has 130,000 followers. That’s a fraction of Meta’s 3 billion monthly active users.
The true purpose of these pages remains unclear. Beyond the obvious comment scam, it can be used for other purposes, such as increasing page views and later spreading misinformation. — This is a cycle we’ve seen on other Facebook pages before generative AI.
Meta did not respond to my request for comment, including on the hacked page.
Facebook knows generative AI is a problem. This was covered in other media well before last week’s study. 404 Media he wrote an article about this in December. Meta’s president of global affairs said in February that the company is working on generative AI labels to roll out later this year. Remarkably, this takes place in an election year, already marred by problems with generative AI, both online and offline.
But I don’t want to see it a label is attached Generated AI content in your feed — No need for generated AI images at all. For another world, check out Meta’s Instagram. There, you’ll find photos and videos of people you really love, athletes, and brands you love, sometimes interspersed with targeted advertisements that will bite you.
I haven’t — yet — found Cruise Ship Jesus on Instagram, which is a real blessing.
Seeing something strange in your social media feed? Email mmorris at insider.com.
