AI For Real?

 Mike Bodnar contemplates detecting authenticity in a digital world of AI slop...

The foundation of a functional democracy and an informed society rests upon a shared understanding of factual reality. Yet, in the modern digital landscape, this foundation is rapidly eroding, to our detriment. 

The rise of sophisticated generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) has introduced an unprecedented challenge: the swift, scalable, and increasingly seamless creation of fabricated news stories, images, and videos. Unlike the crude hoaxes of the past, AI-generated content can now mimic authentic journalism with such precision that distinguishing real news from engineered disinformation has become a profound cognitive and technical hurdle. 

The current crisis stems from the democratisation of content-generation tools. Large Language Models (LLMs) can produce text that mirrors the tone, style, and structure of professional journalism, often faster than a human can type (certainly faster than me!). This capability has fuelled the rapid proliferation of "news" websites that are entirely AI-generated, churning out massive volumes of stories, often with politically motivated or financially exploitative agendas. In short, AI slop. And for most of us, slop conjours up pictures of bland food served with total disinterest, or shoddiness in workmanship. Both are appropriate analogies in this case.

The speed and volume are the key differentiators from previous eras of misinformation. A single actor can now deploy thousands of highly convincing fake articles across numerous platforms in minutes. This speed of spread, coupled with the algorithmic amplification inherent in social media platforms, means a falsehood can achieve global saturation long before human fact-checkers can even begin to debunk it. 

The difficulty in recognition of such material lies not only in the text's fluency, but also in its capacity to incorporate seemingly legitimate, though often hallucinated, sources and data, creating a façade of authenticity that is deeply persuasive.

The Visual and Auditory Assault: Deepfakes and the Disintegration of Trust

While deceptive text is problematic, the ability of AI to generate hyper-realistic images and videos — known as deepfakes — constitutes an even more fundamental assault on shared reality, effectively destroying the maxim that "seeing is believing." 

Deepfakes are synthesized or manipulated media that replace one person’s likeness with another's in existing footage, or which create entirely new, non-existent scenes and events. The old demand, 'pics or it didn't happen' doesn't work any more. 

But these fabrications are so convincing, they have already had tangible real-world consequences, profoundly impacting financial markets and political stability.

In one notable 2023 incident, a deepfake image depicting an explosion near the Pentagon in Washington D.C. briefly circulated online, causing a swift dip in the U.S. stock market before the image could be officially debunked as generated by AI. 

Another pervasive example involves the use of deepfake audio and video to impersonate figures of authority for financial fraud, such as the case of a finance worker being tricked into approving a multi-million-dollar transaction after participating in a video call with convincing AI clones of his company's Chief Financial Officer and other executives.

In the political arena, deepfakes have shown their power to sow chaos and distrust. During conflicts, deepfake videos have surfaced showing high-profile political figures seemingly issuing false surrender orders or making inflammatory statements, deliberately designed to undermine national morale and military resolve. 

Perhaps one of the most viral, non-malicious-but-illustrative, deepfakes was an image of Pope Francis wearing a ridiculously stylish white puffer coat, an image so perfectly rendered and aesthetically humorous that it fooled millions, demonstrating the sheer power of AI to create believable, if slightly absurd, reality. Don't be surprised to see Jesus walking on water sometime soon.

The inherent problem with deepfakes is not just that they exist, but that they can be created and deployed so easily, ensuring that every piece of video evidence must now be treated with an initial - and essential - layer of scepticism.

A History of Human Deception: Roots of the Current Crisis

While the technology is new, the human impulse to fabricate narratives for influence or gain is ancient. Understanding this history is crucial, as it illustrates that the threat is not AI itself, but rather our own tendency to believe what is sensational or what confirms existing biases.

In ancient Rome, Emperor Octavian waged a sophisticated propaganda campaign against his rival, Mark Antony, using pamphlets and slogans etched onto coins to smear Antony’s reputation, portraying him as a corrupted puppet of Cleopatra. This early political misinformation played a critical role in Octavian’s ascent to power. 

Scoot forward 1400 years or so and the invention of the Gutenberg printing press dramatically lowered the barrier to mass communication, leading to the rise of printed, sensationalised “canards” (baseless rumours) and politically-motivated pamphlets.

In the realm of visual hoaxes, the infamous “Great Moon Hoax” of 1835 serves as a stark precedent. The New York Sun newspaper published a series of six articles, falsely attributed to the famous astronomer Sir John Herschel, claiming that life — including bat-winged humanoids and unicorns — had been discovered on the Moon. 

This sensational (and fabricated) journalism temporarily made the Sun shine as one of the most widely read newspapers in the United States, proving that narrative excitement often trumps factual accuracy. 

In art, deception has a long history, too, with countless forged works throughout the centuries, such as the Venus de Brizet, an 18th-century statue buried and then "discovered" by an artist to boost his fame, fooling experts who declared it an ancient Roman artefact.

Perhaps the most famous example of mass media-driven panic was the 1938 radio broadcast of War of the Worlds by Orson Welles. Presented as a series of realistic breaking news bulletins, the dramatisation of an alien invasion caused widespread panic among listeners who missed the disclaimers, demonstrating the explosive potential of content engineered to mimic authentic reporting. These historical events confirm that the vulnerability to deception is a persistent feature of human psychology; AI has simply upgraded the tools of the deceivers.

And don't get me started on clickbait. Oh okay then...

Clickbait

People don't believe how easy it is to fall for clickbait, and everyone is saying the same thing about headlines...

Clickbait is the insidious gateway drug to online content, a psychological tool designed not to inform, but to guarantee engagement. Its primary function is to exploit the "curiosity gap" — the cognitive space between what a reader knows and what they desperately want to know. By using hyper-emotional language, superlatives, and vague, tantalizing promises ("You Won't Believe What Happens Next!"), clickbait triggers an intense, often subconscious, need for resolution.

This technique bypasses critical thinking entirely, substituting logic with raw emotional manipulation. Headlines frequently lean on feelings of outrage, astonishment, or urgency, ensuring an immediate, visceral reaction (which is why tabloids love 'em). For content publishers, clickbait is a highly effective monetisation model; more clicks translate directly into higher ad revenue, regardless of the story's actual quality or factual basis.

The profound consequence is twofold: it devalues legitimate journalism, forcing quality content to compete with sensationalism, and it actively conditions us to associate engagement with emotional arousal, rather than reliable information. It’s a self-perpetuating cycle that prioritises traffic over truth.

A Guide to Information Self-Defence in the Age of AI

So what can we do?

The fight against AI-generated misinformation cannot be won by technology alone; it requires a renewed commitment to critical thinking and verification by every individual. Since AI detection tools are often unreliable and easily bypassed, we must rely on our own analytical skills and a combination of technical checks.

1. Scrutinise the Source and Context

The first and most important step is to question the origin of the information. Ask: Is this story coming from a reputable news organization with a history of fact-checking? Or is it from an unfamiliar blog, an unverified social media account, or a website that mimics a known publication? Reverse-search the article's core claim to see if it is reported by multiple, diverse, and credible sources. If a story is sensational but only appears on one unknown site, treat it with extreme caution.

2. Look for Technical "Tells" in Visual Media

While deepfakes are improving, current AI still struggles with certain details, which can serve as vital clues:

Hands and Fingers: In AI-generated images, look for anomalies in hands — too many or too few fingers, unnatural angles, or objects being gripped incorrectly.

Faces and Symmetry: Unnaturally symmetrical or overly smooth skin texture, or distorted or misaligned ears, glasses, and jewellery can be giveaways.

Text and Backgrounds: Text within AI images is often jumbled, misspelled, or nonsensical. Similarly, backgrounds may exhibit "warping" effects or impossible physics, such as objects blending into one another.

Video Inconsistencies: In deepfake videos, look for unnatural eye-blinking (too little or too much), poor synchronisation between lip movements and audio, and inconsistent shadows or lighting across a scene.

Basically, AI slop can be often recognised by, well, sloppiness.

3. Analyse the Tone and Language

AI-generated text can often be spotted by its lack of genuine human voice, original analysis, or specific, idiosyncratic details. Look for:

• Repetitive or Formal Language: A dry, overly matter-of-fact tone, excessive use of buzzwords, or repetitive sentence structures can indicate AI authorship. A dry, overly matter-of-fact tone, excessive use of buzzwords, or repetitive sentence structures can indicate AI authorship.

• Lack of Context: If the writing makes sweeping claims but lacks appropriate contextual depth, or if it cites sources that are vaguely referenced or appear fake upon a quick search, it is highly suspect.

4. Employ Verification Tools

TinEye

Use tools like reverse image search (Google Lens, TinEye, etc.) to trace the origin of a questionable image or video. If an image is claimed to be from a recent event but surfaces years earlier on a stock photo site, it is likely being repurposed falsely. While AI detection software is imperfect, reverse image search remains a powerful and foundational journalistic technique for verifying content.

So where does that leave us?

The age of generative AI has created a sophisticated new challenge to information authenticity. 

By combining historical awareness of our own gullibility with modern vigilance toward technical imperfections, and by prioritising critical thinking over sensationalism, we can - admittedly with some effort - navigate the treacherous currents of the modern information ecosystem. 

The battle for factual reality is not about censorship; it is about media literacy, and cultivating a healthy, informed scepticism towards the content that floods our digital lives.

So, now you know. From here on, whenever you see a tantalizing headline, or an image or video that seems almost too perfect (or in which, sloppily, a person has six fingers!), question it, research it, evaluate it. Maintain your hold on reality!

A final note...

Oh and one last thing, apart from about half a dozen sentences - and a few of my own interjections (as well as me altering American spelling to proper English) - this article was written by Microsoft Copilot. Images were generated by Google Gemini in most cases. 

It seemed only appropriate to get AI to tell us how to recognise AI... 

 

Your Bike in the Frame

Mike Bodnar provides some hints and tips for taking better pics of your motorcycle…

 

Pretty much perfection (Image: Facebook Marketplace)

I have to declare up front that I am not a professional photographer. A keen amateur, yes, and I’ve been taking pictures for over sixty years, a few of them even award-winning, but professional? No.

So, what I’m sharing with you today is purely based on my experience; it is not the Definitive Guide to Taking Perfect Motorcycle Images. That said, I hope you get something from it.

I also need to be upfront and apologise to anyone whose motorcycle photo I've copied from Facebook Marketplace, Trade Me, or other sales sites. I use them here only to illustrate, not to offend.

An article like this could run into tens of pages, if not hundreds - it could easily be book-length - so I’m going to keep it simple by splitting the subject into just four key segments: Composition, Background, Lighting - and, for the enthusiasts - a little bit about Editing.

Composition

This is quite simply about how you want your bike to look. Motorcycles, by their shape, beg to be shot in landscape rather than portrait mode. So, if you’re using your phone and want to take an image of your bike side-on, hold the phone sideways, not straight up and down. Unless – and there is an exception – you want to capture your bike in a three-quarter profile shot. 

Image from Trade Me. Too much grass
in the foreground, too much foliage behind,
and the succulent plant looks like it's growing
out of the bike...

Try and get all of the motorcycle in the frame. Take note that on many bikes it’s the mirrors that are the highest point of the bike, so try and keep them in shot. Likewise, cutting off the wheels at the bottom will result in a flat-tyre look, so avoid this also.

Consider how much of the frame the bike takes up. If you’re standing too far back you will almost certainly have space in the foreground, off to each side, and above, so take some time to position the bike without including any wasted space. I have seen so many images of motorcycles where a third, sometimes half of the image is taken up with road surface in the foreground. If that happens, you can always crop it out (see Editing later).

The exception to this is where you want a photo of your bike in a particular landscape, showing, for example, that you’ve been to the coast, or a mountain-top, or somewhere with an alpine view. In that case you’re showing the context of the ride, rather than just the bike, and that’s fine. Add it to your travel blog and watch the likes roll in.

No distractions...

If you’re going to shoot it portrait because you want to capture, say, more of the front of the bike, position yourself in front of it, but still slightly off to one side, so that we can see some detail down the side of the machine. See sample pic (left).

And finally from a composition point of view - and if your knees will take it - get down to the bike’s level rather than taking the photo from your usual eye-level. Looking down on your machine from head-height will make it look smaller, so if you can get down on one knee, or even pull up a chair if it’s available, go for it. If you’re really athletic and want a unique view, lie on the ground and take the photo looking up!

(PS: On the other hand, you might want to drag the stepladder out from the garage and stand on that for a higher angle shot. Don't be afraid to experiment!)

Background

Background is too busy. Image from Trade Me

Motorcycles can be visually complex, especially where they don’t have fairings, and most of our bike don’t these days. So it's advisable to avoid ‘busy’ backgrounds, such as picket fences, vegetation, a cluttered garage, or anything that compromises the look of the bike.

If you were engaging a professional photographer with a studio, they would likely pose your machine against an infinity backdrop – basically a sheet of material or even paper – that covers the floor and curves up behind the bike, giving a pure and uninterrupted background with no lines or distractions. The bike is the star of the show, and nothing else matters. The infinity background ensures your eye won't be carried off somewhere else.

Studio shoot: out of reach for most of us.
Image: Neve Studios

Most of us can’t afford a professional studio, so we need to find backgrounds that are at least plain. 

You could always simply hang up a bed sheet behind the bike - perhaps on the good old Kiwi washing line, or pinned to the carport roof beam. 

A rendered concrete wall is another option, as long as it’s painted in a neutral colour. If your bike is blue and the wall is orange, it’s probably not going to work.

Cheaper option: find a neutral background.
(Image: Trade Me)

You can - if you want to be more of a pro photographer and if space allows - position your bike a long way from a busy background so that when you take the photo the bike is in focus and the background slightly blurred. If you’re using a proper camera rather than a phone, and you have a zoom lens, try positioning the bike away from the background, and then position yourself further away from the bike. Zoom in and take the shot. That way you stand a good chance of the background being even more out of focus, and even if it’s a slightly busy one it won’t matter as much. Pro photographers call this sort of out-of-focus background 'bokeh.'

And lastly, your concrete driveway might be exactly the background you're looking for - but you'll need to get the stepladder out and shoot from a high angle.

Lighting

It may come as a surprise – when, as fair-weather motorcyclists, we usually choose sunny days to go for a ride – that cloudy, ‘flat-light’ days make for better motorcycle images. This is because there are no harsh shadows, no areas of contrasting bright and dark, and the details of the bike can be seen more clearly.

Harsh light, along with bike too tight in the frame.
Michael could try harder.

So while you might be tempted to take the ultimate image of your pride and joy when the sun’s shining, think twice.

A pro photographer would, in such circumstances, perhaps shoot the shaded side of the bike, but use a light reflector – a circular sheet of white (and on the reverse side, foil) material which can ‘bounce’ sunlight onto the bike to help even-out the lighting. It doesn’t matter if you don’t have one – you can use anything large and white, like a sheet, or a big piece of white card. As long as it bounces the sunlight it should work.

Multiple things wrong here
(apologies to owner!):bottom half of picture
irrelevant (and photographer's shadow
in shot),bike too small in the frame
with cluttered background, and wasted
space showing the driveway and paddock...

And speaking of sunshine, watch for your own shadow in shot! I have seen so many photos taken by owners of their bikes on a gorgeous sunny day, only for their own shadow to drape across the bike like a dark wraith. This is another good reason for getting down on one knee for the shot.

Alternatively, if you can find somewhere shaded, use that, but not – and I can’t emphasise this enough – not where the shade is comprised of multiple tree branches, or a fence of railings. What you need is smooth, even shade, the sort you’d get under a carport with a semi-opaque roof.

The time of day you choose is important also, especially if the sun is actually shining and you want to use it. There’s a time that photographers call ‘the golden hour,’ which is not long after dawn, and, at the other end of the day, just before sunset. At both times the sun is low in the sky, and your bike’s paintwork will glow accordingly. Especially towards sunset, you might need to move the bike around a bit until you get the sunset reflected in the paintwork. It can be physically strenuous, but worth it.

Golden hour

If the sun has just set, but there’s still light in the sky, consider illuminating your bike a bit using a torch, and maybe turning on your bike’s headlamp to add some extra interest. If you want to get really professional, use some lighting behind the bike, or even under it, to help augment the scene. There are plenty of usb-chargeable lights available online for this sort of thing, and they’re not expensive. Experimenting with lighting is both fun and rewarding - try it!

Editing

Finally, what can we do to enhance our images after we’ve shot them? Or make some of our older shots - perhaps of bikes we no longer own - better? The answer is: plenty, but let’s start with the simplest: cropping.

Cropping is just re-framing the image to exclude superfluous space around the bike. Most phone cameras come equipped with cropping capability, so if you have inadvertently included way too much foreground, simply crop it out and save the new image. 

This is the photo from earlier in the article, cropped and with
the background blurred. It literally took about 10 minutes,
and now all our attention is focused on the bike.

You really don’t have to spend any money on fancy editing software like Lightroom or Photoshop – there are many free apps you can download that are easy to use. If you use Google Photos to store your images, for example, simply opening any of the pics will present you with multiple editing options, from changing the brightness, contrast and shadows, to increasing the warmth, making the image ‘pop,’ or adding a vignette round the edges. And of course, you can crop away to your heart’s content.

Of the options in Google Photos for example, I mostly use the cropping, brightness, saturation, warmth, and – frequently – vignette tools. The vignette in particular adds a faint black halo around the edge of the image, which helps emphasise the importance of what is in the centre of the frame – in this case, your motorcycle.

I urge you to play with these tools and see what they can do for your images. You can always undo something if you don’t like it.

As I mentioned at the start, a subject like this could easily run to the length of a book, but even if you consider just the basics of composition, background, and lighting, you can easily turn your snapshots into artworks. And don't forget, with digital photography, take as many images as you like till you get it right - it doesn't cost anything!

POSTSCRIPT UPDATE!

Since I wrote this article, Google's Gemini AI generator has suddenly risen to great prominence, and has been promoting how much it can help turn photos into masterpieces in a matter of seconds. 

Believe me, it can, and it can make a very ordinary image of your motorcycle into a work of art. Try it and see for yourself. 

What will help achieve something remarkable is to make your prompt - that is, what you tell the AI to do to your image - as clear as possible. 

Before, and...

For example, here's a before and after example of my bike. I asked Gemini to make the background look like a stormy sky, with clouds lit from behind by lightning. I asked it to also put some pools of water around the bike, with wisps of steam rising here and there. It took less than a minute, and I love the outcome. 

At the moment Google Gemini Flash 2.5 is free, and maybe it will stay that way, I don't know. But the point is it costs nothing to play with it, and you can tell it to refine your images as many times as you like until you're happy. Let me know in the comments how you get on.

If you want to see some of my images – none of them of motorbikes or AI-generated! – visit my Flickr portfolio here: Mike Bodnar | Flickr