Under the other photos it says A photo taken by a BBC North West Tonight reporter showed the bridge is undamaged and A BBC North West reporter visited the bridge today and confirmed it was undamaged

They may have first ran the photo through an AI, but they also went out to verify. Or ran it after verification to understand it better, maybe

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lazystar 8 hours ago | parent [-]

So.. is this where the AI hype train starts to lose steam? One AI hallucinated and caused the incident, and another AI program just wasted everyone's time after it was unable to verify the issue. Sounds like AI was utterly useless to everyone involved.

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bigiain 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> One AI hallucinated and caused the incident

I suspect that AI was prompted to create the image, not that this was an incidental "hallucination".

Cynical-me suspects this may have been a trial run by malicious actors experimenting with disrupting critical infrastructure.

	▲	permonst 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		There is precedent for state actors putting a lot of effort into a hoax like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbian_Chemicals_Plant_expl...

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1659447091 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Sounds like AI was utterly useless to everyone involved

Maybe.

Imo, I think the advances in AI and the hype toward generated everything will actually be the current societies digitally-obsessed course-correction back to having a greater emphases on things like theater, live music, conversing with people in-person or even strangers (the horror, I know) simply to connect/consume more meaningfully. It'll level out integrating both instead of being so digitally loop-sided as humans adapt to enjoy both.*

To me, this shows a need for more local journalism that has been decimated by the digital world. By journalism, I mean it in a more traditional sense, not bloggers and podcast (no shade some follow principled, journalistic integrity -- as some national "traditional" one don't). Local journalism is usually held to account by the community, and even though the worldwide BBC site has this story, it was the local reporters they had that were able to verify. If these AI stories/events accelerate a return to local reporting with a worldwide audience, then all the better.

* I try to be a realist, but when I err, it tends to be on the optimist side

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nicoburns 7 hours ago | parent [-]

The tech giants sucking up all the ad revenue is what killed local journalism. Unless you can find a solution to that problem (or an alternstove fundong model), it's not coming back.

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DrewADesign 5 hours ago | parent [-]

But just think of all the people that didn’t have to receive a paycheck because of all this efficiency!

It’s really incredible how the supposedly unassailable judgement of mass consumer preference consistently leads our society to produce worse shit so we can have more or it, and rewards the chief enshittifiers with mega yachts.

	▲	kiba 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		They have powerful untaxed monopolies in excess of the economic value tech companies themselves generate. At some point, the value of their services come from the people who use their sites.

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ceejayoz 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> Sounds like AI was utterly useless to everyone involved.

Not the hoaxer!