The rapid growth of ‘AI slop’ – content created by artificial tools – is starting to warp our perception of what is, or could be, real My eye was caught by a striking photograph in the most recent edition of Charles Arthur’s Substack newsletter Social Warming. It shows a narrow street in the aftermath of the “rain bomb” that devastated the region of Valencia in Spain. A year’s worth of rain fell in a single day, and in some towns more than 490 litres a square metre fell in eight hours. Water is very heavy, so if there’s a gradient it will flow downhill with the kind of force that can pick up a heavy SUV and toss it around like a toy. And if it channels down a narrow urban street, it will throw parked cars around like King Kong in a bad mood. The photograph in Arthur’s article showed what had happened in a particular street. Taken with a telephoto lens from an upper storey of a building, it showed a chaotic and almost surreal scene: about 70 vehicles of all sizes jumbled up and scattered at crazy angles along the length of the street. Continue reading... {Categories} _Category: Takes{/Categories} {URL}https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/09/the-images-of-spains-floods-werent-created-by-ai-the-trouble-is-people-think-they-were{/URL} {Author}John Naughton{/Author} {Image}{/Image} {Keywords}Artificial intelligence (AI),Computing,Technology,Social media{/Keywords} {Source}POV{/Source} {Thumb}{/Thumb}