AI-generated video of glass bridge breaking misleads online
The clip appears to show people crossing a glass platform against a cliff face, which breaks and falls into the ravine below.
The clip, which also spread on Instagram, YouTube, Tiktok and Facebook, garnered more than two million views.
Comments from some users indicate they believed the footage was real.
"The load was too much," one user commented.
"Terrifying, isn't it?" wrote another.
China is believed to have more than 2,000 glass bridges and platforms at various tourist sites across the country (archived link).
However, the last reported safety incident at a glass bridge in China was in May 2021 -- a man was left dangling at a tourist spot in northeastern Jilin province when the glass panels were damaged by high winds, according to a report by state news media Xinhua (archived link).
A close inspection of the clip also shows inconsistencies typical of AI-generated videos.
These include people appearing to melt into the cliff before reappearing in different coloured clothes, while two of the people appear to combine into one person after the bridge collapses. One section of the glass guardrail also disappears immediately after the bridge breaks.
Despite the rapid progress of generative AI, errors still appear in AI-generated content. These flaws are often the clearest signs of a fabricated image.
Jacobo Castellanos, coordinator for human rights organisation WITNESS, which developed a Deepfakes Rapid Response Force said "it's clear that the video in question is AI-generated" (archived link).
"Several signs point to its synthetic nature, including people morphing or disappearing, as well as various unnatural movements and transitions that are characteristic of the current capacity of generative video tools," he said.
AFP has fact-checked AI-generated images before here.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Boston Globe
23 minutes ago
- Boston Globe
40 percent of workers see wage growth lagging inflation, study finds
Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up AVIATION Advertisement AI air fare pricing is a 'bait-and-switch' says American Airlines CEO American Airlines Group Inc.'s top executive blasted the use of artificial intelligence in setting air fares, calling the practice inappropriate because it could trick travelers. 'Consumers need to know that they can trust American,' chief executive Robert Isom said on a call with analysts after the company reported earnings. 'This is not about bait-and-switch. This is not about tricking.' Isom's criticism of the practice echoes several members of the Congress, who are pushing for answers from Delta Air Lines Inc. on its plans to use AI to help set pricing on as much as 20 percent of its network by the end of this year. Delta said this month that it's still in the testing phase that involves about 3 percent of the network today. Delta says it's testing AI to eliminate manual processes and accelerate analysis for dynamic pricing, a strategy long used by airlines and others to raise or lower fares based on demand, timing, and other factors. It is not using the technology to target customers using personal data, and all customers see the same fares in all retail channels, the carrier said in a statement. 'There is no fare product Delta has ever used, is testing or plans to use that targets customers with individualized offers based on personal information or otherwise,' according to the statement from the airline. 'A variety of market forces drive the dynamic pricing model that's been used in the global industry for decades, with new tech simply streamlining this process.' American is using AI to improve airline operations and recovery from service interruptions and to make it easier for consumers to work with the carrier, Isom said. Employing it in pricing decisions 'is not something we will do,' he said, adding that 'some of the things I've heard are just not good.' — BLOOMBERG NEWS Advertisement MARKETS Advertisement Even as stocks set record, JP Morgan is bullish there are better days to come. The S&P 500 Index's record-setting spree may be stoking concerns about inflated share prices and a revival of meme-stock froth, but JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s trading desk isn't concerned. Rather, it expects the furious rally in US equities to keep going. 'While bullishness is not yet consensus, client conversations reveal that even those that skewed bearish are throwing in the towel,' the bank's head of global market intelligence Andrew Tyler said Thursday in a note ahead of the market open. Recent progress in trade deals, positive economic data, and rekindling mergers and acquisitions activity should keep powering the stock market, according to Tyler. From a technical standpoint, the rally is also being supported by the combination of the momentum unwind and meme mania making it difficult for traders to hold short positions. The market could even 'take a significant step higher' if macroeconomic data holds up and the impending trade deal between the United States and Europe is sealed with China following closely behind, Tyler said. — BLOOMBERG NEWS AUTOMOTIVE Tesla profits slip again amid ongoing slump in EV sales Tesla on Wednesday reported a slump in profit, the third quarterly decline in a row, as the company cut car prices in an attempt to revive sales. The company made $1.2 billion from April to June, down from $1.4 billion a year earlier. Sales fell to $22.5 billion from $25.5 billion in the second quarter of 2024. Tesla has not reported an increase in quarterly profit since the third quarter of 2024. Tesla's weak earnings are likely to reinforce concern among some investors that CEO Elon Musk is neglecting the car business while he focuses the company's resources on autonomous driving software, self-driving taxis, and humanoid robots. Musk has said those technologies will make Tesla the most valuable company in the world. Tesla has begun testing a limited self-driving taxi service in Austin, Texas, and said Wednesday it would expand the service 'rapidly.' Wall Street has largely bought into that vision, and the company's share price is up about 50 percent since early April. But such taxis and robots are not yet generating significant revenue for Tesla, and the company remains reliant on the car business to finance Musk's futuristic plans. — NEW YORK TIMES Advertisement BIG TECH Alphabet earnings surge on growth in AI Whether Google will be a winner in the race for dominance in artificial intelligence won't be clear for at least a year or two. In the meantime, its bottom line is doing just fine. Alphabet, Google's parent company, reported second-quarter results Wednesday afternoon that were better than expected. Revenue rose 14 percent from a year earlier to $96.4 billion, while earnings per share jumped 22 percent to $2.31. Analysts had expected revenue of $93.98 billion and earnings per share of $2.20. 'We are leading at the frontier of AI,' said Sundar Pichai, the company's chief executive. Pichai, who mentioned AI more than a dozen times in his commentary on the quarter, added, 'AI is positively impacting every part of the business.' Investors appeared underwhelmed by the quarterly results. Alphabet shares rose less than 2 percent on the news. One apparent problem: Capital expenditures for the year will be $10 billion higher than the company had projected, it said, because of its booming cloud storage business. Even for Google, the new estimate of $85 billion is real money. A few years ago, Google was spending about a quarter of that sum. Investors want the company to pour enough into new data centers to have competitive cloud and AI businesses but not so much that it affects lush profit margins. That's a difficult balancing act. — NEW YORK TIMES Advertisement
Wall Street Journal
24 minutes ago
- Wall Street Journal
A Failed Microsoft Security Patch Is the Latest Win for Chinese Hackers
Last year, Satya Nadella pledged to make security priority number one at Microsoft MSFT 0.99%increase; green up pointing triangle. A new hack involving China is showing just how difficult that can be. The attack involves several versions of Microsoft's SharePoint software that serve as a document storage platform for customers who don't want to use the cloud. Microsoft released patches for a pair of SharePoint bugs earlier this month, but the fixes were quickly bypassed, allowing China-linked hackers to break into hundreds of organizations, according to security researchers.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Stock market today: Dow, S&P 500, Nasdaq futures trade flat as Trump downplays Powell tensions
US stock futures held steady after President Trump visited the Federal Reserve and Wall Street digested the latest batch of corporate earnings. Futures attached to the Dow Jones Industrial Average (YM=F), the benchmark S&P 500 (ES=F), and the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 (NQ=F) fluttered up 0.1%. Trump visited the Fed on Thursday afternoon to take a tour of its $2.5 billion renovation project, led by chair Jerome Powell. The president has spent weeks criticizing the project as too expensive, sparking speculation he might use it as a pretext to try to fire Powell for alleged mismanagement. During the tour, however, Trump indicated he wasn't considering firing the Fed chair. "To do that is a big move, and I just don't think it's necessary," he said. The president also downplayed his disagreements with Powell over interest rates, saying he believes the chair will "do the right thing." "I'd love him to lower interest rates," the president reiterated. Intel reported its earnings after the bell Thursday, beating Wall Street expectations on revenue. The company's stock turned negative, however, as CEO Lip-Bu Tan discussed layoffs and the cancelation of some factory plans. In day trading, the S&P 500 scored its fourth consecutive record high in a row as Google (GOOG) earnings boosted optimism about the promises of AI. Wall Street also continued to hope that the Trump administration will strike more trade deals before the president's Aug. 1 deadline, even as the risk of higher-than-expected baseline tariffs grows. Read more: The latest on Trump's tariffs This week, Wall Street has largely shrugged off trade tensions as Big Tech earnings roll in. Next week brings more market-moving results from members of the "Magnificent Seven," including Apple (AAPL), Microsoft (MSFT), Meta (META), and Amazon (AMZN).
