Not even the scientific community is saved from images of artificial intelligence

To publish a scientific article, you must be very careful. At least in theory because Gizmodo is found That it doesn't always happen this way and that everything can get out of control, because The article about the relationship between stem cells and rat testicles did not turn out as expected. This research became prominent, but not because of its results, but because of the images it included.

The problem is not only that the images are generated by artificial intelligence, but also that they are not biologically acceptable when viewed. Huge mouse penis It goes beyond the limits of illustration itself (and imagination, I want to believe). And we, like the poor mouse with that limb, were astonished by its enormity.

Just at the beginning of the introduction, they put the image that you can see on the cover, which was created by Midjourney (at least the authors are transparent in that sense) and that, as you can also see, It shows a huge penis with at least four testicleshighlighting a very big one.

The article was submitted for review last November, and was approved in December. Published on February 13 It retracted after only three days. The question here is how the editors of the magazine that published it did not notice this grave error. While that is true the border Being an open access publisher, they also tend to be cautious about accepting submissions.

Spokesman the border I communicated with Gizmodo To make some statement, like this”[el artículo] It included poor numbers and explanations generated by artificial intelligence software, including mice“.Moreover, lThey accepted that this particular article somehow managed to pass the filters Which analyzes whether the image was generated by artificial intelligence or not.

This situation not only brought problems to the borderBut one of the referees responsible for the article saw the need to talk about it as well Collecting DeputyEvacuation responsibilaty:

“As a biomedical researcher, I review an article solely based on its scientific aspects. Regarding AI-generated figures, since Midjourney is cited by the author, it is the responsibility of the editor to make the decision. They should contact Frontiers regarding the figures policy that Created by Amnesty International.

The image problem generated by artificial intelligence

There is no doubt that this incident does not only indicate that There are gaps to fill in review protocols by the borderBut in science in general. It can be difficult to classify AI-generated images when you're not used to detecting them. They already said that in one interview to American Scientific with Hani Farid, a professor of computer science at UCLA, is also an expert in digital forensics. Fred mentions that it has become very difficult to detect what is being created by AI.

“It is becoming increasingly difficult to believe what we read, see and hear on the Internet. This is worrying, both because there will be people who are victims of deepfakes and because there will be people who falsely claim to ‘defend AI’ to avoid it.” responsible. […] Reveal [se está volviendo] More difficult because it is precise. it's complicated; The bar gets higher and higher. I can count on one hand the number of laboratories in the world that can do this reliably. “It's worrying.”

This task is complicated even for algorithms trained to detect it, yes, but in the case of the giant rat penis, anyone would have immediately questioned its credibility, even if they were not image-generated detectors or biologists accustomed to looking at rat parts. I mean, let's get back to the picture. It's just a huge dick Mid-flight It knows how far it extends, it has weird labels, and even the Petri dish in the bottom right corner looks like a bowl of cereal, only instead corn chips We find murine stem cells.

Let it be what it is, The article has been downloaded more than 24,000 times and read more than 363,000 times. Time will tell if he will be a part of it Most cited retracted articles in historyBut that's a different story. In the meantime, we can all laugh in honor of the mouse with the giant penis.