People know this header image is fake

🌟 ARE YOU in the DC area?

Because I’m giving a talk at The People’s Book on September 25! It is about my book, of course, but I’m with Kali Holder, a delightful human being with many of her own amazing science stories. It is of course free and I’d love to see you there!

If you do not know the header image on this post is fake….

It is. Really fake.

If you look closely, the tells are obvious. No child’s nose is QUITE that twee, no child has the eyebrows of a concerned middle-aged man. The puppy is weirdly blurry in places and highly defined in others. It’s AI Slop, fast, AI-generated “artistic” pus designed to ooze into our algorithms and infect us with false reality.

This image was shared after Hurricane Helene, and originated in conservative-leaning groups, with plenty of outrage about how much, or how little, victims (ahem….white victims…) of the disaster were getting compared to how much immigrants were getting. The numbers were spurious at best, the whole concept a pile of misinformation and AI designed to go viral. And go viral it did.

A recent article in The Conversation uses it as an example of what AI slop is, and notes that it takes many forms (including music, there are AI generated musicians on Spotify and as a real musician who deeply loves creating music in all its messy glory the nausea I feel hearing this is…it’s something). The article states that this spreads misinformation, harms artists, and wastes a ton of energy (and links to this excellent video from Last Week Tonight about AI Slop). The conclusion is that you have to flag it. It’s problematic, we have to get rid of it.

I think the article helps to define AI slop. But I think it misses something very important about this crap, and about misinformation in general. Because I saw this exact image washing around the internet. And I pointed out to someone who shared it that it WAS AI-generated.

She recognized immediately that it was. She hadn’t looked closely, but when she did, she went “oh, right!”

But she did not take the post down. Because she did not care. She didn’t care the numbers were fake. She didn’t care the image was fake. She felt, in that moment, that it represented her views. I’ve come across this issue with this person many times. I’ll point out something is fake, she’ll go “oh, I guess so,” and the post remains. Because she does not care what the reality is. She cares that it matches her feelings. 

And I think this is what a lot of scientists looking into misinformation might see, but skirt around, and something journalists might also miss and never ask about. We, scientists and journalists (esp me, a scientist TURNED journalist) care deeply about the truth. It’s easy to assume that other people do too, that if we tell them it’s not true of course they will want to fix it! That they want to share truths and facts and want their emotions to align with those facts.

I hate to tell us this.

But in my experience with these people (my n is small, but it’s on both sides), people sharing AI slop and misinformation do not actually care that it’s wrong. They care that it matches their feelings. There’s scientific research that gets at this point. People who are relying on emotion, especially anger, are more likely to believe fake news (and I think we can all agree anger is something we’re all kind of feeling lately). Even positive emotions matter, people who honest to gosh believe they’re trying to help will share fake news they think will help spread the word. People would rather share stuff that confirms their biases. Sure, it’s too good to be true, but it’s also too good to not share. This is especially true if people aren’t especially mindful and are, er, more religious. As one commenter pointed out when I mentioned this on Bluesky, a lot of times they respond with “well it PROMOTES something good.”

Because these people are not sharing facts. They don’t actually care about sharing facts. They are sharing feelings. The posts they share describe how they feel, and it doesn’t matter what really happened. If the truth contradicts those feelings, it’s the feelings that win out, because people have come to believe (on both sides) that their personal experiences and feelings are more true than truth itself. 

And that? That is more terrifying than any AI slop I’ve ever seen.

References!

• Martel C, Pennycook G, Rand DG. Reliance on emotion promotes belief in fake news. Cogn Res Princ Implic. 2020 Oct 7;5(1):47. doi: 10.1186/s41235-020-00252-3. PMID: 33026546; PMCID: PMC7539247.

• Sharma PR, Wade KA, Jobson L. A systematic review of the relationship between emotion and susceptibility to misinformation. Memory. 2023 Jan;31(1):1-21. doi: 10.1080/09658211.2022.2120623. Epub 2022 Sep 12. PMID: 36093958.

• Talwar S, Dhir A, Singh D, Virk GS, Salo J. Sharing of fake news on social media: Application of the honeycomb framework and the third-person effect hypothesis. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services. 2020 Nov;57:102197. doi: 10.1016/j.jretconser.2020.102197. Epub 2020 Jul 7. PMCID: PMC7340407.

• Wee-Kheng Tan, Chun Yu Hsu; The application of emotions, sharing motivations, and psychological distance in examining the intention to share COVID-19-related fake news. Online Information Review 18 January 2023; 47 (1): 59–80. https://doi.org/10.1108/OIR-08-2021-0448

• An, Y., Huang, Y., Danjuma, N. U., Apuke, O. D., & Tunca, E. A. (2023). Why do people spread fake news? Modelling the factors that influence social media users’ fake news sharing behaviour. Information Development, 41(1), 48-60. https://doi.org/10.1177/02666669231194357 (Original work published 2025)

• Duffy, A., Tandoc, E., & Ling, R. (2019). Too good to be true, too good not to share: the social utility of fake news. Information, Communication & Society, 23(13), 1965–1979. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2019.1623904

Where have I been?

• My piece on how sweat really forms is at Science News Explores! It’s not droplets, it’s more of a sponge soaking thing.

• As is my piece on dogs watching TV! All dogs watching TV are Good Dogs.

Where have you been?

• I just want to spread the news that my wonderful colleagues at Science News formed a union. In very typical fashion, the nonprofit that runs Science News did not want this. And now? They are dragging on giving them a contract. For more than a YEAR. SN has some of the best journalists in the business, highly qualified, brilliant, funny people who deserve fair pay! Not to mention they deserve to work from home. Seriously when I was on staff I’d go to work and only talk to people through Slack for entire days at a time. We’re WRITERS, FFS! Please give them the support they deserve!

• Florida is eliminating all vaccine mandates, and Alexandra Petri as per usual is on point: And the state of Florida, understandably, said: Enough. This needs to stop. We have decided that there are too many children, and we can let some of them go. 

• I love when we assume that because we can’t do something, an animal can’t possibly. And then those animals prove us wrong. Especially if they’re coyotes, who doggy paddled a mile across some dangerous waters. Never assume.

• Parents in Central Park are understandably upset because there are rats on the playground, but….well playgrounds are great for rats. Sand! Water! Lots of food dropped by children! The way to cure it? Get rid of the food.

• TIL that fruit flies have sperm as long as the fly. Can you imagine a sperm that’s like as long as a human. AMAZING. Do you feel inadequate? GOOD.