AI, or artificial intelligence, has certainly been in the news recently. Just Googling “AI in the news” brought up these headlines from the past 24 hours:

• Scammers Are Now Using AI to Sound Like Family Members (Washington Post)
• How A.I. is Being Used to Detect Cancer that Doctors Miss (NY Times)
• A Stanford Doctor Who Studied People Who Live to 110 on How Humanity and AI will Conquer Aging (CNBC)
• AlienCon and AI-Drawn Comics (The Guardian)

BoomerTECH Adventures’ last column reviewed what AI is (computers performing tasks traditionally done by people) and its history, and looked at one of the latest AI rages, ChatGPT. Today we will explore AI in the visual world, its use in scams and some unintended consequences.

Does AI have any applications in the visual world?

Definitely! You may have read about deep fakes which is the process of superimposing someone’s face on another person’s body (image or video) in ways that are almost impossible to detect. Just Google Tom Cruise or Bruce Willis or Simon Cowell + deep fake to see examples.

There are apps that will now create images from a description. One example I saw was “a cute dog in a sushi doghouse.” Those words generated an image of a corgi in a doghouse built out of sushi.  To see the image, read Rob Toews’ article in Forbes (online) titled “4 Predictions About the Wild New World of Text-to-Image IA.” The article also explains the impact of this technology on the business world. This use of AI certainly provides interesting entertainment and a multitude of options for creating graphics for advertising, illustrations and presentations.

A variety of apps are available at Apple’s App Store or Google’s Play Store. Examples are DALL-E and Stability.ai. Do your research before downloading an app.  I thought it would be fun to experiment with one, so I downloaded what I thought was a free app.  It was free, but to generate a good image, you must also download and pay for additional software. The free image was most disappointing.

Folks at MIT have developed a technique that will create holograms, flat images that look like three-dimensional ones in seconds (remember the holodeck on the Enterprise in “Star Trek: The Next Generation”?). It may be available soon as an app anyone can use.

How are scammers upping their game with AI?

One way is to bamboozle money from loving grandparents trying to help a grandchild in trouble. The victims are convinced they are talking with their relatives. Here’s a snippet from the Washington Post article mentioned above: “Advancements in artificial intelligence have added a terrifying new layer, allowing bad actors to replicate a voice with just an audio sample of a few sentences. Powered by AI, a slew of cheap online tools can translate an audio file into a replica of a voice, allowing a swindler to make it ‘speak’ whatever they type” (tinyurl.com/AIscammers). According to the article, over 36,000 people were scammed into sending money to people they thought were family or friends in 2022. Unfortunately, the voices on the telephone were scammers.

Other ways include voice impersonations that convince business associates to transfer funds or trick someone into giving their password for a financial account. Phishing (authentic-looking emails and text messages asking for money or passwords) will probably become more sophisticated and harder to spot. Certainly, we all need to become more vigilant in our online activities in order not to fall prey to scammers.

What are the dangers and pitfalls of AI applications?

CNET found out the hard way that AI-generated articles sometimes have factual errors. They were using AI software designed in-house. Having to backtrack and correct information is not a good image for a news outlet.

Also, readers are not always happy to learn they are reading something generated technologically and not by humans. It’s probably a trust factor. News outlets now tend to identify a piece as AI-generated.

There is great concern about copyright infringement and the protection of intellectual property. Evidently, artists’ signatures sometimes appear on an AI-generated image, indicating that it probably came from a web posting and is being used without permission. Since AI engines are searching the web for information and images they may use pictures and words from sites that folks believe are their intellectual property — blogs, social media posts, original art and so on.

With my teacher hat on, I think a lot about the impact of AI in a classroom. I can see many ways to use AI material to help students learn about good writing, think about the impact of AI in their futures and explore the issues of intellectual property. However, there is a process to writing, and that process leads to thinking deeply about a topic and, hopefully, will generate original thinking. I wouldn’t want to lose that aspect of learning. By writing this piece myself and not using AI, I learned a tremendous amount about AI.

What about the loss of creativity?

A cousin who is an artist recently commented, “Why would anyone want to buy my art when they can go online and generate an image?” Will we read novels generated by ChatGPT in minutes rather than original works that may have taken months of an author’s life to craft? Will business solutions depend on AI algorithms and not on innovative thinking?

The biggest danger, I think, is the potential for damaging lives with AI visual manipulation. Women are especially at risk (“AI porn is easy to make now. For women, that’s a nightmare” by Tatum Hunter Washington Post, Feb. 13). Jobs lost, reputations ruined, false information spread widely — these are all potential dangers from AI visual apps because they are making it so easy to fake an image.

We used to say, “Don’t believe everything you read.” Add to that, don’t believe everything you see in a video or image or hear over your phone.

The degree to which we allow AI to influence our lives is certainly something to ponder. Life-saving applications in the medical world, efficiency in the business world, a helping hand to many folks struggling with everyday tasks and all of the unintended consequences are aspects of this new technology. Many decisions lay ahead, both legal and personal.

BoomerTECH Adventures (boomertechadventures.com) provides expert guidance and resources to help Boomers and older adults develop competence and confidence using their Apple devices. Boomers themselves, BoomerTECH Adventures rely on their skills as educators to create experiences that meet individual needs through videos, Zoom presentations, tech tips and timely blog posts.