incorrect information<\/a> about the search for the missing boy.<\/p>\nRebecca Johnson, an expert in AI ethics at the University of Sydney, said AI-generated images could be created by “nefarious people” looking to enhance followers or create clickbait.<\/p>\n
“[People] can take advantage of this situation, and this void of independent fact checking, to gather people that are under stress,” she said.<\/p>\n
“The public are under stress that this little boy could be taken, and [they] use that stress to drag them down into different rabbit holes of misinformation.”<\/p>\n
Ms Johnson said the issue had become heightened as people now engaged with less traditional media.<\/p>\n
“In this situation the real problem comes when a lot of people abandoned legacy media \u2026 and start to completely, or almost completely, receive all of their news through these jumbled social media sites,” she said.<\/p>\n
Public advised to assess origin of information<\/p>\n
She said to combat the issue, people needed to assess where the information they consumed came from.<\/p>\n
“We see a lot of people using [AI-search tools] instead of Google search or instead of going to legacy media … without understanding that these are just generative tools,” she said.<\/p>\n
“That stuff they’re dragging from the internet might be misinformation itself, and so what we really should be focusing on is teaching people how to do real research.”<\/p>\n
This week, Google launched a chatbot-like advanced form of AI search in Australia, called “AI Mode”, which embeds the switch from “search engine” to “answer engine”.<\/p>\n
South Australia’s Assistant Minister for AI Michael Brown said the misinformation being spread about Gus showed the importance of people understanding the technology.<\/p>\n
“That way, we can make sure that we use AI responsibly, and we use AI in a way that will enable us to be more productive, but we’re also aware of the limitations of AI and the possible downsides of AI,” he said.<\/p>\n
![\"a](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/1760319690_718_9e6237d95d1f34a6a0711d17b7010d18\")
<\/p>\n
The boy was last seen by his grandmother playing at his family’s homestead in South Australia’s mid north.\u00a0 (ABC News: Daniel Taylor)<\/p>\n
South Australia’s Commissioner for Victims’ Rights, Sarah Quick, said AI was added an extra layer of trauma for the families of victims.<\/p>\n
“It’s an extremely cruel act that has very real consequences for Gus’s family, the community, police and those involved in the search for Gus,” she said.<\/p>\n
Ms Quick said it would become a growing issue.<\/p>\n
“I’m certain it is something that will become more prolific unfortunately,” she said,<\/p>\n
“We now have to consider the additional harm that it is causing people.”<\/p>\n
![\"Victims](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/7c79b5f6695df54b94b21b43ebc1a3b5\")
<\/p>\n
Sarah Quick says AI generated images add an extra layer of trauma for the families of victims. (ABC News: Che Chorley)<\/p>\n
In a statement, a SA Police spokesperson said images of missing persons were “released to help police find [them] as fast as possible”.<\/p>\n
“SAPOL releases images of missing persons after gaining permission from the family or guardian of the person,” they said.<\/p>\n
“Members of the public should only trust reputable sources like government agencies where images are published online.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An expert in the ethics of artificial intelligence says a fake image of missing four-year-old Gus being kidnapped…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":209084,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,128923,254,255,64,63,11587,2456,9704,128927,40385,115293,128926,56135,128925,113890,52676,118099,16872,128924,96541,1124,105,118098],"class_list":["post-209083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-ai-image","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-ethics","tag-facebook","tag-fake","tag-fake-images","tag-fake-news","tag-gus","tag-homestead","tag-kidnapping","tag-michael-brown","tag-mid-north","tag-misinformation","tag-missing-boy","tag-missing-person","tag-missing-sa-boy","tag-police-search","tag-south-australia","tag-technology","tag-yunta"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209083"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209083\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/209084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}