Recently, on social media, I've been seeing videos posted showing polar bears, beluga whales, and other marine mammals being saved by humans.
They are clearly injured, and sometimes even bleeding, at the beginning of the video, but, thanks to the intervention of kind sailors, they are nursed back to health and released into the wild again. These animals always show gratitude toward their benefactors by snuggling up to them or looking back one last time before they float off on an ice berg or descend into the depths of the sea.
These videos are obviously AI-generated but they are not identified as such and comments indicate that many people believe them to be genuine, expressing admiration and thanks for the men (they're always men and never women) who rescue these pitiful creatures who got tangled in ropes or mangled by a ship's propeller. These images are part of a larger body of postings that I've been seeing on social media that either misidentify animal and plant life or post images of natural phenomena that have been manipulated by AI in strange ways. For example, photos of extraordinarily colored birds are shown with outrageous color patterns that clearly don't appear in nature. I have had friends who have fallen for them and believed they depicted reality.
As someone who loves to learn about plants and animals, it disturbs me that misinformation is frivolously disseminated. I suppose the purpose is to get clicks and likes and to generate income. It's becoming easier for people to use AI to generate posts painlessly, and the AI can even figure out what social media users are likely to engage with. My guess is that I've been pegged as a sucker for a cute whale or polar bear, which is why they're appearing in my feeds.
