When artist Max Arrington first drew Shrimp Jesus, he never dreamed an AI image of Jesus Christ with shrimp-like arms and legs would become a viral internet phenomenon.
"Sometimes there are spammers and scammers who recognize that they can use this tool to make images — very heart-wrenching images — very easily, very cheaply," Renee DiResta, a technical research manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory who co-authored the report, told Scripps News. "You'll see things that are trying to appeal to sympathy, or making people want to engage with the content," DiResta said.
If a user, for example, engages with religious posts on Facebook, the algorithm could eventually recommend an AI-generated image of Shrimp Jesus. According to the Stanford Internet Observatory report, citing Meta's Transparency Center, a Facebook post with unlabeled AI images landed in the top 10 most-viewed pieces of content last year.
"We welcome more research into AI and cross-platform inauthentic behavior since deceptive efforts rarely target only one platform. We've reviewed the pages in this report and have taken action against those engaged in inauthentic behavior, and demoted the clickbait sites under our Content Distribution Guidelines," a Meta spokesperson said.
"Some of the early ones were kids with displaying what was supposedly their art. And it would say, 'It's my child's first competition, what do you think,' right? And of course, the point there is to is to generate engagement, to get attention, and then to make the content hit more people," DiResta said.