this post was submitted on 07 Dec 2025
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What the actual fuck? You couldn't spare someone to just go look at the fucking thing rather than asking ChatGPT to spin you a tale? What are we even doing here, BBC?
So they did. Why are we talking about ChatGPT then? You could just leave that part out. It's useless. Obviously a fake photo has been manipulated. Why bother asking?
I tried the image of this real actual road collapse: https://www.tv2.no/nyheter/innenriks/60-mennesker-isolert-etter-veiras/12875776
I told ChatGPT it was fake and asked it to explain why. It assured me I was a special boy asking valid questions and helpfully made up some claims.
collapsed inline media
God damn I hate this tool.
Thanks for posting this, great example
They needed time for their journalists to get there. They're too busy on the beaches counting migrant boat crossings.
I am guessing the reporter wanted to remind people tools exist for this, however the reporter isn't tech savvy enough to realize ChatGPT isn't one of them.
afaik, there actually aren't any reliable tools for this.
the highest accuracy rate I've seen reported for "AI detectors" is somewhere around 60%; barely better than a random guess...
edit: i think that way for text/LLM, to be fair.
kinda doubt images are much better though...happy to hear otherwise, if there are better ones!
The problem is any AI detector can be used to train AI to fool it, if it's publicly available
exactly!
using a "detector" is how (not all, but a lot of) AIs (LLMs, GenAI) are trained:
have one AI that's a "student", and one that's a "teacher" and pit them against one another until the student fools the teacher nearly 100% of the time. this is what's usually called "training" an AI.
one can do very funny things with this tech!
for anyone that wants to see this process in action, here's a great example:
Benn Jorda: Breaking The Creepy AI in Police Cameras
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generative_adversarial_network
Someone commented a reply which I thought worthy of highlighting:
"I need privacy, not because my actions are questionable, but because your judgement and intentions are."
My best guess is SEO. Journalism that mentions ChatGPT gets more hits. It might be they did use a specialist or specialized software and the editor was like "Say it was ChatGPT, otherwise people get confused, and we get more views. No one's going to fact check whether or not someone used ChatGPT."
That's just my wild, somewhat informed speculation.
Devils advocate, AI might be an agent that detects tapering with a NLP frontend.
Not all AI is LLMs.
A "chatbot" is not a specialized AI.
(I feel like maybe I need to put this boilerplate in every comment about AI, but I'd hate that.) I'm not against AI or even chatbots. They have their uses. This is not using them appropriately.
A chatbot can be the user facing side of a specialized agent.
That's actually how original change bots were. Siri didn't know how to get the weather, it was able to classify the question as a weather question, parse time and location and which APIs to call on those cases.
Okay I get you're playing devil's advocate here, but set that aside for a moment. Is it more likely that BBC has a specialized chatbot that orchestrates expert APIs including for analyzing photos, or that the reporter asked ChatGPT? Even in the unlikely event I'm wrong, what is the message to the audience? That ChatGPT can investigate just as well as BBC. Which may well be the case, but it oughtn't be.
My second point still stands. If you sent someone to look at the thing and it's fine, I can tell you the photo is fake or manipulated without even looking at the damn thing.
If the article were written 10 years ago I would’ve just assumed they had used something like:
https://fotoforensics.com/
ChatGPT is a fronted for specialized modules.
If you e.g. ask it to do maths, it will not do it via LLM but run it through a maths module.
I don't know for a fact whether it has a photo analysis module, but I'd be surprised if it didn't.
It's not like BBC is a single person with no skill other than a driving license and at least one functional eye.
Hell, they don't even need to go, just call the local services.
For me it's most likely that they have a specialized tool than an LLM detecting correctly tampering with the photo.
But if you say it's unlikely you're wrong, then I must be wrong I guess.
What about this part?
Either it's irresponsible to use ChatGPT to analyze the photo or it's irresponsible to present to the reader that chatbots can do the job. Particularly when they've done the investigation the proper way.
Deliberate or not, they are encouraging Facebook conspiracy debates by people who lead AI to tell them a photo is fake and think that's just as valid as BBC reporting.
About that part I would say the article doesn't mention ChatGPT, only AI.
"AI Chatbot". Which is what to 99% of people, almost certainly including the journalist who doesn't live under a rock? They are just avoiding naming it.
Yes. It's ChatGPT. You got them good. You passed the test Neo. Now get the pills.
No. You are the one who knows, without doubt, they used ChatGPT and can't be wrong. If you think "hey, there are other options, don't jump to unproven conclusions" is to like to argue I'm not the one with a problem.
I'm open to being proven wrong, but you need a bit more than "trust me, I must know".
The article says they used ChatGPT or some similar LLM bot. It says they used a chatbot, and that's what the word chatbot means by default. A skilled reporter mentions if it was something else.
The reporter used a chatbot such as ChatGPT to ask if there's anything suspicious in the image, the chatbot, by coincidence, happened to point out something in the photo that the reporter could then recognise as AI-generated indeed, and got on typing his article again.
The only part of this that is not mentioned in the article is that the reporter confirmed the referred spot in the image with his own eyes, but that is such an integral part of a reporter's education that you need specific reasons to work against the assumption that this was done.
No it doesn't.
No it's not
The article doesn't say the kind of chatbot, not chatbot means LLM or ChatGPT.
I'm not going to continue. It's just going in circles.
Are you sure you're not the LLM?
You can see my comment history to determine if I'm an LLM or not :)
In any case, have fun in your circles!
I don't think it's irresponsible to suggest to readers that they can use an AI chatbot to examine any given image to see if it was AI-generated. Even the lowest-performing multi-model chatbots (e.g. Grok and ChatGPT) can do that pretty effectively.
Also: Why stop at one? Try a whole bunch! Especially if you're a reporter working for the BBC!
It's not like they give an answer, "yes: Definitely fake" or "no: Definitely real." They will analyze the image and give you some information about it such as tell-tale signs that an image could have been faked.
But why speculate? Try it right fucking now: Ask ChatGPT or Gemini (the current king at such things BTW... For the next month at least hahaha) if any given image is fake. It only takes a minute or two to test it out with a bunch of images!
Then come back and tell us that's irresponsible with some screenshots demonstrating why.
I don't need to do that. And what's more, it wouldn't be any kind of proof because I can bias the results just by how I phrase the query. I've been using AI for 6 years and use it on a near-daily basis. I'm very familiar with what it can do and what it can't.
Between bias and randomness, you will have images that are evaluated as both fake and real at different times to different people. What use is that?
There's hoping that the reporter then looked at the image and noticed, "oh, true! That's an obvious spot there!"
But the stories of Russians under my bed stealing my washing machine's CPU are totally real.
This is true, but also there's no way this wouldn't have been reported rather quick, like not just online but within 5min someone would have been all:
"Oi 999? The bridge on Crumpet Lane 'as fallen down, I can't get to me Chippy!"
Or
"Oi wot was that loud bang outside me flat?! Made me spill me vindaloo! Holy Smeg the bridge collapsed!"
Or like isn't the UK the most surveiled country with their camera system? Is this bridge not on camera already? For that the AI telling location would probably be handy too I'd just be surprised they don't have it on security cams.
Ahahah! That's a good one!
You think all those cameras are accessible to everyone or even the municipal authorities? Think again!
All those cameras are mostly useless—even for law enforcement (the only ones with access). It's not like anyone is watching them in real time and the recordings—if they even have any—are like any IT request: Open a ticket and wait. How long? I have no idea.
Try it: If you live in the UK, find some camera in a public location and call the police to ask them, "is there an accident at (location camera is directly pointing at)?"
They will ask you all sorts of questions before answering you (just tell them you heard it through the grapevine or something) but ultimately, they will send someone out to investigate because accessing the camera is too much of a pain in the ass.
It's the same situation here in the US. I know because the UK uses the same damned cameras and recording tech. It sucks! They're always looking for ways to make it easier to use and every rollout of new software actually makes it harder and more complicated!
How easy is the ticket system at your work? Now throw in dozens of extra government-mandated fields 🤣
Never forget: The UK invented bureaucracy and needles paperwork!
Lmao that is pretty fucking funny honestly. Fair enough I suppose I overestimated their ability, I thought they used them all the time for like hat permit or dog license verification.