Hi Dotikers!

Yesterday, we were asking whether a billion dollars was enough to bet against LLMs. Today, AI gives us a concrete example of what those same models can do on the darker side: dressing up propaganda as information.

Der Spiegel, one of Germany's most respected weekly publications, had to pull several photos from its Iran coverage after discovering they were very likely AI-generated or manipulated. The images came from SalamPix agency, funneled into European databases through French agency Abaca Press. An Iranian photographer admitted to feeding the system with visuals sourced from a platform run by the Revolutionary Guards, without ever flagging them as such.

This is no rookie mistake. The flagged photos include an aerial shot of an Iranian aircraft carrier, a portrait of Ali Khamenei with his son, and an embassy building in Niger. Digital forensics firm Neuramancer classified three out of five as likely AI-generated. A fourth showed traces of Flux 2, a well-known image generation tool. Only one image slipped through undetected.

The playbook is straightforward and effective: the Revolutionary Guards operate a structured propaganda apparatus, complete with their own news agencies and production units. Their strategy isn't to flood social media. It's to infiltrate professional distribution channels and reach serious newsrooms. And it worked, until Dutch agency ANP raised the alarm after blocking around a thousand SalamPix images. It took a foreign agency for major German outlets to react.

This is where the story goes beyond a media incident. Image verification in the age of generative AI is no longer optional. It's existential for journalism. Saying that "AI-generated images are a taboo in journalism," as Der Spiegel did, rings hollow when that taboo was just broken at scale without anyone noticing.

M.

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