\u201cIt is important that the public has trust and confidence in reliable and accurate emergency information channels,\u201d it said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn an emergency, our primary channel to get information out to the public is the media.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nema worked closely with the media to ensure they provide verified, credible information to the public, it said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe encourage people to be vigilant, use trusted sources for their information, and find out if the source of information is credible before sharing it.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe closely monitor what is being circulated during a response but we would encourage New Zealanders to call out suspicious images when they see them, or report them if there is a suitable way to do this.\u201d<\/p>\n
AI expert: \u2018Check your sources\u2019<\/p>\n
Victoria University senior lecturer in AI, Dr Andrew Lensen, believed it was the first time AI images of a disaster in New Zealand had circulated online.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut, and I always hate to say this, I\u2019m not surprised,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve seen a lot of AI being used for all sorts of … image and video generation over the past year or so, most notably in things like politics, but I think disasters are unfortunately the sort of the next cab off the ranks.\u201d<\/p>\n
Lensen believed it would only get worse because it was so easy to create fake content.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think there\u2019s also a question there, of course, as to why people do this. I think part of it is they get reactions, they … get clicks, they get engagement.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut then there\u2019s also of course some other people who have slightly more nefarious reasons as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
People who know Mount Maunganui or had seen the slip site would easily be able to tell some of the images were not real \u2013 but others, for example people who had never visited Aotearoa, may not.<\/p>\n
Lensen said that had the opposite effect, too, with people from overseas seeing real images of the disaster online and believing them to be AI-generated.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy best advice is that we need to go back to those authoritative sources … what is Nema reporting? What\u2019s on the council\u2019s Facebook page? What\u2019s on the council\u2019s website? What is Radio New Zealand or other public voices saying about this?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve got to check your sources, you can\u2019t just rely on what someone you don\u2019t know has posted, because it\u2019s very hard to know whether or not it is real content.\u201d<\/p>\n
Netsafe, the online safety agency, had advice about how to spot AI-generated images and video, which includes looking for \u201cstrange details\u201d, checking the source, and questioning who made it and why.<\/p>\n
– RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cIt is important that the public has trust and confidence in reliable and accurate emergency information channels,\u201d it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":253506,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[365,363,364,2084,48803,37483,5606,2083,17707,13233,111,139,69,1118,10711,1642,64572,145,26697],"class_list":["post-253505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-crimp","tag-disaster","tag-fake","tag-images","tag-lauren","tag-maunganui","tag-mount","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-officials","tag-online","tag-slip","tag-technology","tag-warn"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=253505"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253505\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/253506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}