Synthetic Tiananmen tank man degrades Google Search

An AI-generated selfie of China's infamous Tiananmen Square Massacre 'tank man' was listed as the top featured image on Google Search.

The AI image was created using the Midjourney image generator by Reddit user Ouroboros696969 six months earlier as an art experiment, and had been posted to the service's sub-Reddit, which enables Midjourney users to post their AI-generated content. 

The image was subsequently picked up, assessed and published by Google's automated search engine crawlers and ranking systems. 

The incident prompted commentators to point to the degradation of Google's search engine and the information ecosystem more generally, and raised questions about the technology company's ability to detect and manage AI-generated political misinformation and disinformation.

Google later removed the fake image from its Knowledge Graph.

News, commentary, analysis 🗞️

• https://www.404media.co/first-google-search-result-for-tiananmen-square-tank-man-is-ai-generated-selfie/

• https://petapixel.com/2023/09/27/ai-image-of-tiananmen-squares-tank-man-rises-to-the-top-of-google-search/

• https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/sep/26/techscape-ai-images-elections-integrity-tiananmen-square

• https://futurism.com/the-byte/google-ai-generated-fake-tank-man