AI's blind spot: Tools fail to detect their own fakes

When outraged Filipinos turned to an AI-powered chatbot to verify a viral photograph of a lawmaker embroiled in a corruption scandal, the tool failed to detect it was fabricated — even though it had generated the image itself.

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Internet users are increasingly turning to chatbots to verify images in real time, but the tools often fail, raising questions about their visual debunking capabilities at a time when major tech platforms are scaling back human fact-checking.

In many cases, the tools wrongly identify images as real even when they are generated using the same generative models, further muddying an online information landscape awash with Al-generated fakes.

Among them is a fabricated image circulating on social media of Zaldy Co, a former party-list lawmaker charged by prosecutors in a flood-control corruption scam that sparked massive protests in the disaster-prone country.

The image of Co, whose whereabouts have been unknown since the official probe began, appeared to show him in Portugal.

When online sleuths tracking him asked Google’s new AI mode whether the image was real, it incorrectly said it was authentic.

AFP's fact-checkers tracked down its creator and determined that the image was generated using Google AI.