South-Carolina
AI-generated spam is starting to fill social media. Here's why
Casey Morris, an attorney in Northern Virginia, recently started checking Facebook again after a long break. Among posts from friends and family, she noticed a strange trend.
“The caption will say, ‘Close your eyes 70% and see magic.’ And without squinting at all, it’s very obviously sort of an image of Jesus, but it will be made up of, like, vegetables and a tractor and a little girl that are sort of distorted,” she said.
That wasn’t the only oddity in Morris’ feed. Similar pictures with identical captions recurred. So did different, more emotionally exploitative posts depicting disabled mothers and children in the mud or smiling amputees, with captions asking for a birthday wish.
“It has made Facebook a very bizarre, very creepy place for me,” Morris said.
Between their subject matter, stylistic clues and odd errors, it quickly became obvious to Morris that these images were fake — the products of artificial intelligence.
They’re not being posted by people she knows or follows. Instead, Facebook is suggesting she might be interested in them — and they seem to be really popular.
“They’re getting thousands of reactions and thousands of comments [from] people who seem to think they’re real, so wishing them a happy birthday or saying something religious in the comments,” she said.
Morris isn’t the only Facebook user whose feed has started to fill up with AI-generated spam. Reporters at the tech website 404 Media tracked a surge in apparently AI-generated posts on Facebook, which is owned by Meta, in recent months. AI-generated images like these are starting to show up on other social media sites too, including Threads, which is also owned by Meta, and LinkedIn.
Spam and scams
On Facebook, in many cases, it appears that the platform’s own algorithm is boosting AI posts.
When researchers at Georgetown and Stanford universities investigated more than 100 Facebook pages that routinely post AI content — sometimes dozens of times a day — they found that many are engaging in scams and spam.
“We saw AI-generated images of everything you can imagine, from log cabins to grandmas with birthday cakes to children with masterful paintings that just simply couldn’t be real,” said Josh Goldstein, a research fellow at Georgetown University and co-author of the preprint study, which hasn’t yet undergone peer review.
Goldstein and his co-author also found that Facebook is actively recommending some of this AI content into users’ feeds — potentially creating a cycle where the posts get more engagement, so they get recommended to even more users. Some individual posts from the pages they analyzed have accumulated hundreds of thousands and even millions of interactions.
“These weren’t sporadic images here or there that only a few people were interacting with. They were really getting a ton of traction,” Goldstein said.
Their analysis found that some of these pages are classic spam, posting links to websites where they can collect ad revenue. Others are scammers, advertising AI-generated products that don’t appear to actually exist.
But many of the pages don’t have a clear financial motivation, Goldstein said. They seem to simply be accumulating an audience for unknown purposes.
“It could be that these were nefarious pages that were trying to build an audience and would later pivot to trying to sell goods or link to ad-laden websites or maybe even change their topics to something political altogether,” Goldstein said. “But I suspect more likely, many of these pages were simply creators who realized it was a useful tactic for getting audience engagement.”
Clickbait has always been on social media. But in the past few years, Facebook has doubled the amount of posts it recommends to users, as it seeks to keep up with changes in social media pioneered by TikTok. On a recent earnings call, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told analysts that recommended posts now account for about 30% of users’ feeds.
A shift from reality-based images to the uncanny
At the same time, AI-generated content is now easier than ever for anyone to make. Together, these dynamics are creating a recipe for weird renderings of Jesus, disturbing birthday posts and impossible architecture and handicrafts to go viral.
“It’s mimicking, like, all of the elements of what made something go viral. But they’re putting in the most bizarre images I’ve ever seen,” said Brian Penny, a freelance writer who has been tracking AI on Facebook for nearly two years. He’s part of a group dedicated to sharing and debunking AI images.
Penny has seen a shift from pictures that have some grounding in reality — like the AI-generated depiction of Pope Francis in a puffy coat that went viral last year — to something far more uncanny.
“We work to reduce the spread of content that is spammy or sensational because we want users to have a good experience, which is why we offer them controls to what they see in their feed,” a spokesperson for Meta told NPR in a statement.
The company plans to begin labeling AI-generated content created with some industry-leading tools soon. Last week, TikTok started applying similar labels to some AI-generated posts on its platform.
In the meantime, the surge in AI spam is turning off many people.
Katrina McVay, who lives in Grand Rapids, Mich., says she has had to discourage her mom from buying woodwork and other home decor she sees on Facebook — that are clearly fake.
“She’d be like, ‘Wouldn’t this be so cool for your daughter?’” McVay said. “And I’m like, ‘That’s not real, though.’”
Some Facebook users are considering leaving the platform entirely because of their frustrations with being recommended spammy AI images.
“Am I supposed to sift through all this to see that my cousin’s just been to the Sahara desert?” asked Borys Rzonca, a Los Angeles furniture designer. “It’s no longer worth it for me.”
Beyond finding AI spam on Facebook annoying, many people NPR spoke with say they’re worried about the larger stakes of artificial images showing up everywhere.
“It just sort of reinforces people’s disbelief and … makes it harder to see what is real,” said Hobey Ford, a puppeteer in North Carolina who has seen AI images pop up in Facebook groups dedicated to science, claiming to depict new discoveries.
“And I think that’s dangerous in our world right now,” he said.
Copyright 2024 NPR
It’s almost that time of year again when 77,000 fans pack into Williams-Brice Stadium to watch the Gamecocks play under the Saturday night lights. Yes, football is just around the corner, and it’s officially 35 days until the Gamecocks face off against Old Dominion. This year, they’ll do so sporting a new look for the 2024 football season.
This past weekend, the Gamecocks held their team media days, where the creative team captured a slew of content from the players—photos, videos, and headshots for use in the stadium, on graphics, and by websites like ESPN. It’s common to see players filling your timeline with pictures from this event, but this year, something almost slipped by unnoticed due to its subtlety.
The Gamecocks have made a few tweaks to their uniforms by using a new template from Under Armour, a change that had been rumored earlier this offseason. The most noticeable updates include extended and enlarged side stripes on the jerseys, giving them a cleaner look. The numbers on the jerseys also appear slightly bigger and seem to reflect light more effectively—at least from the studio images compared to last year. Additionally, the stripes on the collar have been updated, now cut off at the top of the neckline, a nod to the old school uniforms from the 2010s, but with a modern twist.
Another detail is a new Under Armour logo. This logo has a sticker-like look on the garnet uniforms, featuring a white Under Armour logo atop what appears to be garnet plastic, giving it a bit of pop.
As for the helmets, it’s possible that the garnet on the facemasks is a slightly new shade, though this hasn’t been confirmed yet. It could be due to the studio lighting. The Gamecocks will sport a more modern look on Under Armour’s version of the 1980 uniforms, which Coach Shane Beamer kept around after they released the “Black Magic” uniforms just a year before he accepted the job.
The tweaks may be minor, but they contribute to a refreshed and distinctive look for the Gamecocks. It’s a new season with new beginnings, and the Gamecocks are ready to take the field in style.
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“We are cooperating fully with government authorities and conducting our own investigation into this incident,” the Sarasota-based meats company said in a statement.
The listeria outbreak was first reported last week.
Since late May, 34 people were sickened across 13 states, with all but one hospitalized. Two people died — in Illinois and New Jersey. It can take weeks for symptoms to develop, so there might be more cases, officials said.
People most commonly reported eating deli-sliced turkey, liverwurst and ham, officials said.
Listeria can contaminate food and sicken people who eat it. Symptoms include fever, muscle aches, nausea and diarrhea. It can be treated with antibiotics, but it is especially dangerous to pregnant women, newborns, the elderly and those with compromised immune systems.
An estimated 1,600 people get listeria food poisoning each year and about 260 die, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The Boar’s Head recall of over 200,000 pounds shipped nationwide applies to meats sliced at a deli counter, not prepackaged meats.
It includes a number of multi-pound packages stamped with an Aug. 10 sell-by date, including bologna, garlic bologna, beef bologna, beef salami, Italian Cappy-style ham and Extra Hot Italian Cappy-style ham. Also included is Steakhouse Roasted Bacon Heat and Eat, with a sell-by date of Aug. 15.
The company said customers should throw away the recalled products, or return them to the store for a refund. Health officials said refrigerators should be thoroughly cleaned to prevent contamination of other foods.
Post and Courier Reporter David Ferrara in Greenville contributed to this report.
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An anonymous couple from South Carolina is thanking their lucky stars after one of them realized their “losing” lottery ticket was actually a big winner.
The couple, described by the South Carolina Education Lottery in a July 25 news release as being from the “upstate” region of South Carolina, recently purchased a $5 Double Sided Dollars Extra Play lottery scratch-off ticket from a convenience store in Spartanburg.
Spartanburg is a city in northern South Carolina, about 75 miles southwest of Charlotte, North Carolina.
GUT FEELING LEADS TO $300,000 LOTTERY WIN FOR SOUTH CAROLINA MAN
After scratching it, the wife did not think she’d won — so she threw the ticket away.
But her eagle-eyed husband noticed the ticket in the trash and saw something his wife had missed.
The winning ticket was plucked from the trash can after it was inadvertently thrown away. (South Carolina Education Lottery; iStock / Getty Images)
“You have a 12 on it,” the man recounted to the South Carolina Education Lottery, meaning that the ticket was not a loser after all.
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He plucked the ticket from the trash and his wife kept scratching the card – discovering that she had won $200,000.
The couple told the South Carolina Education Lottery they’re “happy and thankful everything worked out.”
With their winnings, the two plan on buying a new house, they told lottery officials.
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The couple had a 1 in 750,000 chance of winning the $200,000 top prize in the Double Sided Dollars Extra Play, the South Carolina Education Lottery said.
The South Carolina Education Lottery reported on the couple’s stroke of good luck in a July 25 article on its website. (South Carolina Education Lottery / Fox News)
The Double Sided Dollars Extra Play game went on sale on March 19, 2024, the South Carolina Education Lottery’s website said.
Three of the four top prizes of $200,000 have been claimed.
A total of 32 second-place prizes of $1,000 are still available.
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Thousands of other prizes, ranging from $5 to $500, are also available.
The South Carolina Education Lottery was created after a Nov. 7, 2000, referendum that saw residents of the state vote to approve the implementation of a state-run lottery, the lottery’s website said.
One $200,000 prize has yet to be claimed, lottery officials said. (South Carolina Education Lottery)
The South Carolina Education Lottery Act was ratified by the South Carolina General Assembly a little more than six months later, and the bill was signed into law.
The first tickets for the South Carolina Education Lottery’s games were sold in March 2002, its website said.
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A quarter of the South Carolina Education Lottery’s proceeds go toward various educational programs in the state, according to the website.
The rest go to prizes, retailer commissions and operating costs.
This amounts to more than $8 billion since 2002, according to the lottery.
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During the first 20 years of the lottery, more than 2.5 million scholarships have been distributed to South Carolina students, the website said.
The South Carolina Education Lottery declined to provide additional details on the lucky couple’s big win.
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