Human memories can be distorted by photos and videos edited by artificial intelligence (AI), raising concerns over what might happen if such manipulation becomes an automatic feature of smartphones.
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and her colleagues recruited 200 people 鈥� 100 male and 100 female 鈥� and showed the same collection of 24 photographs. They then gave them an unconnected task that took 2 minutes to complete.
After this, the researchers split the participants into four equal groups and showed them either the original photographs once more, AI-edited versions of them, AI-generated video created from the original photos or AI-generated video created from AI-edited versions of the photos. The changes made by AI included the addition or removal of people or objects, altering the ethnicity or gender of people and swapping weather conditions.
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Next, all participants completed a memory test with 24 questions about the original images. Some 20 per cent of the group who saw the original images twice remembered details incorrectly, showing human recall is fallible anyway.
But in all three of the other groups, the rate of false memories was even higher, with the worst scores being from the group that saw AI-generated video of AI-edited photos. These participants had a false memory rate of around 40 per cent.
Smartphones from Apple, Google and Samsung now have AI tools to edit photos, allowing users to remove unwanted people or objects or even combine elements from multiple photos into one, and generative AI models such as OpenAI鈥檚 Sora are increasingly capable of animating static images into realistic video.
Chan says it is ultimately down to personal choice whether people edit their own photographs and videos, but she thinks it is important this choice remains and people are aware of the repercussions if they opt for editing.
鈥淚n the future it might be automatic,鈥� she says. 鈥淚 think the worst part here, that we need to be aware or concerned about, is when the user isn鈥檛 aware of it. We definitely have to be aware and work together with these companies, or have a way to mitigate these effects. Maybe have sort of a structure where users can still control and say 鈥業 want to remember this as it was鈥�, or at least have a tag that says 鈥榯his was a doctored photo, this was a changed photo, this was not a real one鈥�.鈥�
at the University of Reading, UK, says false memories could be implanted either on a personal level with edited photo albums, or on a wider level with images released in mainstream or social media. But in all cases, there is a limit to how much memories can be distorted before people question them.
鈥淭here is absolutely nothing new here, psychologically,鈥� says Beaman. 鈥淭he fact that you can implant false memories using edited images is not a surprise. What exacerbates it in this current time, which is unique I think, is that it鈥檚 quick and easy to do the AI. Anybody can do it.鈥�
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