The questions raised by Sisi Wei, editor-in-chief at The Markup, in a recent article shed light on the dilemmas faced by journalists when covering AI-generated pictures. She questions whether the news articles should contain the generated images and, if so, how to label them or what kinds of disclaimers to include. As she notes, this issue is difficult because readers may not pay attention to the caption. The following is a quote from the article.
There’s no question to me that anyone who comes into contact with the internet these days will need to start questioning if the images they’re seeing are real. But what’s our job as journalists in this situation? When we republish viral or newsworthy images that have been altered or were generated by AI, what should we do to make sure we’re giving readers the information they need? Doing it in the caption or the headline isn’t good enough—we can’t assume that readers will read them.