Police Department Apologizes for Sharing AI-Doctored Evidence Photo on Social Media (boston.com) 45
A Maine police department has now acknowledged "it inadvertently shared an AI-altered photo of drug evidence on social media," reports Boston.com:
The image from the Westbrook Police Department showed a collection of drug paraphernalia purportedly seized during a recent drug bust on Brackett Street, including a scale and white powder in plastic bags. According to Westbrook police, an officer involved in the arrests snapped the evidence photo and used a photo editing app to insert the department's patch. "The patch was added, and the photograph with the patch was sent to one of our Facebook administrators, who posted it," the department explained in a post. "Unbeknownst to anyone, when the app added the patch, it altered the packaging and some of the other attributes on the photograph. None of us caught it or realized it."
It wasn't long before the edited image's gibberish text and hazy edges drew criticism from social media users. According to the Portland Press Herald, Westbrook police initially denied AI had been used to generate the photo before eventually confirming its use of the AI chatbot ChatGPT. The department issued a public apology Tuesday, sharing a side-by-side comparison of the original and edited images.
"It was never our intent to alter the image of the evidence," the department's post read. "We never realized that using a photoshop app to add our logo would alter a photograph so substantially."
It wasn't long before the edited image's gibberish text and hazy edges drew criticism from social media users. According to the Portland Press Herald, Westbrook police initially denied AI had been used to generate the photo before eventually confirming its use of the AI chatbot ChatGPT. The department issued a public apology Tuesday, sharing a side-by-side comparison of the original and edited images.
"It was never our intent to alter the image of the evidence," the department's post read. "We never realized that using a photoshop app to add our logo would alter a photograph so substantially."
never attribute to malice... (Score:5, Insightful)
... what can be explained by incompetence.
It's only getting harder though. AI makes the incompetent more capable.
Re: never attribute to malice... (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm sorry, but we've had tools to stack images as layers and to apply those layers as watermarks or overlays or even as 'frames' for decades now. The police department featured here has just demonstrated that they do not have a process that follows some kind of standard, they are using undocumented processes and random software that itself is probably undocumented to demonstrate evidence.
I could fully expect defense lawyers for cases that relied on the courtroom presentation of photographic evidence that features this police department's watermark or logo or other manipulation to challenge that evidence in an appeal. The police have already demonstrated they did not follow a documented chain of custody for handling and processing that evidence, so where the conviction was reliant on that evidence it might well be able to be excluded on a retrial if the court agrees that the police cannot demonstrate how they processed it.
When it comes to enforcing the law, stupidity may as well be malice.
Re: never attribute to malice... (Score:5, Insightful)
The original photo is evidence; it was still intact. The edited photo with the police badge watermark was to be a publicity tool, not evidence.
Though I'll state that you don't even need layers for this - just open the .jpg or whatever you got from the evidence in an email or whatever in paint, save as a new file, paste in the watermark, save again.
Re: never attribute to malice... (Score:4, Insightful)
The original photo is evidence; it was still intact. The edited photo with the police badge watermark was to be a publicity tool, not evidence.
Yeah. You’re right. It told a defense lawyer and the public everything they needed to know about the sheer incompetence of an IT department in charge of digital evidence.
Though I'll state that you don't even need layers for this..
Yeah. You’re right. You barely need a lawyers statement to infer gross incompetence and start to question every case that department has ever handled.
Shocking you don’t see how fucked that could get in a courtroom.
Re: (Score:3)
It appears that the original photo isn't evidence either. It's a photo of evidence. The actual evidence that would be presented in court consists of the various physical objects you see in the photo. It's plausible that this photo, not being evidence, was not subject to any of the procedures that would be applied to actual digital evidence, for example, a digital photo seized from a suspect's computer. So it's not clear that this casts significant doubt on their handling of actual evidence. I could see
Re: (Score:3)
I'm sorry, but we've had tools to stack images as layers and to apply those layers as watermarks or overlays or even as 'frames' for decades now.
Layers? Watermarks? Overlays? What are you talking about? The clueless admin assistant at the department who thinks "Photoshop" is where you go to get pictures from your vacation printed wants to know.
I could fully expect defense lawyers for cases that relied on the courtroom presentation of photographic evidence that features this police department's watermark or logo or other manipulation to challenge that evidence in an appeal.
Errr no. This has nothing to do with the courtroom in the slightest. This was a social media post. Originals are never edited which is why they all look so rubbish. Calm the heck down.
When it comes to enforcing the law, stupidity may as well be malice.
You invented the jump to conclusions mat didn't you.
Never attribute to POLICE ... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
... what can be explained by incompetence.
It's only getting harder though. AI makes the incompetent more capable.
Uh, I’m gonna go with malice until someone can actually validate the actual innocence of their “mistake” and excuse for evidence tampering.
You know, before the public starts wondering just how many other prison sentences were created or enhanced by the exact same “oops”.
Re: (Score:1)
Uh, I’m gonna go with malice until someone can actually validate the actual innocence of their “mistake” and excuse for evidence tampering.
You know, before the public starts wondering just how many other prison sentences were created or enhanced by the exact same “oops”.
There was apparently no evidence tampering. The photo was not evidence. It was a photo taken for PR purposes. A photo of evidence. There's no indication that the photo, original or doctored, is being presented as evidence to any court.
The need for validation is understandable. Which is why, according to TFA,
“To remain fully transparent, we will be inviting the news media to come look at the original evidence, so they can see that the evidence does actually exist.”
What a relief (Score:2)
It wasn't long before the edited image's gibberish text and hazy edges drew criticism from social media users.
What a relief. Drugs with well-defined edges are much safer!
The core of the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
What I'm reading here is that a program altered data without explicit permission from the user, and without notification. Even this "feature" was apparently unknown.
That is what I call something to worry about. Not quite unexpected, but still fuel for paranoia.
Re:The core of the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
The core of the problem was that they initially denied that they did anything at all. It wasn't until after they were pressured to actually investigate that they finally admitted they doctored the photo. In other words, they straight up lied right from the get-go. Their default position was to lie about.
Re:The core of the problem (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:3)
But that's not what happened. They posted the doctored image on Facebook and hundreds of people called them out on it. Then, without investigating, their response was to gaslight people, saying "The packaging is most likely foreign, and it is possible that whoever made the packaging used AI to make a clearly knock-off package" (they denied it in two separate posts). For an organization that supposedly specializes in investigations and relies on the public trust, AT THE VERY LEAST it makes them look wildly i
Re: (Score:3)
The issue is not that an office screwed up trying to add a logo. The issue is that the department's response was to gaslight the public about it.
If no one knows that alterations beyond adding a logo have been made, it's not "gaslighting"
Re: (Score:2)
What I understand is the photo was obviously altered, to the extent that hundreds of laymen noticed it. That would have included whoever is running the cops' Facebook page.
I'm sure the PD is used to having employees fuck up. It's telling that their reaction isn't to get the facts and investigate, but reflexively start with the "We're going to tell you that you didn't see what you just saw" bit - that's S.O.P. for police departments in the US.
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Their default position was to lie about.
Their default position is that some social media person didn't know what they fuck they are talking about. This isn't the courtroom. This is dumb marketing, and they literally updated their post within hours.
Smart tools that need to be outsmarted (Score:1)
This mentality of "the user is dumb, so the app has to make up for it" is a rather unfortunate degradation of functionality. And it's not just the "ai photoshop".
Mundane things like sharelatex have this dumbass autocomplete feature on by default that automatically close an open bracket, brace or parentheses for you. So if you try to put one in because you need to fix an overzealous backspace, it puts in its pair right after. And if you're not paying attention your document still won't compile.
This is why (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
We have a system where innocence is presumed and beyond-a-reasonable-doubt is supposed to be the stabdard
Not sure how that addresses the problem of those charged with enforcing evidence tampering laws being guilty of evidence tampering. Not even Infernal Repairs is equipped to deal with that shit.
Ironic how the public will start to see law enforcement as needing more than reasonable doubt to prove their innocence. Perhaps if they weren’t guilty of trying to shitcan the Bill of Rights damn near daily in the endless pursuit of profit..
unnecessary (Score:5, Insightful)
The police shouldn't be altering or editing evidence photos in any way, shape, or form. There is no reason to add the department logo.
Re: (Score:2)
This is correct. Unfortunately, this is something of a lie realization for many people. Even scientists are just getting used to the idea that under no circumstances should you ever touch the pixels of an image that is supposed to be used as evidence. All operations on the image should be documented and all annotations should be either be vector based in a separate layer.
Re: unnecessary (Score:2)
You must aquit!
Re: (Score:2)
Any sane judge would toss that case instantly.
Re: (Score:2)
There is no judge unless that's what you now call the regular social media mob.
Re: (Score:2)
I can see plenty of reasons to add the department logo, to remind people of where that particular bust came from.
What it doesn't need to be, what it shouldn't be, is something that is trying to look like an actual part of the original image. It should look like a computer logo on a photo, not an actual fabric badge pasted to the wall.
Re: (Score:2)
I can see plenty of reasons to add the department logo, to remind people of where that particular bust came from.
Completely unnecessary as the photo will be attached to the police report that will have the department logo. The police should never alter a photo at all for any reason.
Photo alteration (Score:2)
I think that you're mixing up that a photo can be used for multiple purposes.
Basically, the original unedited photo goes into the police report/file for evidentiary purposes.
The altered photo - probably also resized and compressed to be easier on bandwidth, is what is posted for publicity purposes, where there isn't a police report also attached, where there's a high probability of it becoming disconnected from the website.
The version of the photo intended for facebook or whatever shouldn't ever be presente
Re: (Score:2)
That was phrased badly. What I meant is that you can keep multiple versions of a photo, used for different purposes.
If you're doing things right, watermarking/editing a photo doesn't destroy the original. The original goes into evidence, the watermarked is posted to the public. That way, there's evidence of the source of the picture, even if it is scraped and separated from the website/page.
In physical terms, it'd be like writing the details of the photograph on the back, like what we used to do with tra
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
That's even more stupid and a waste of time and effort.
Re: (Score:2)
That's even more stupid and a waste of time and effort.
You better tell that to news and media for the past 80 years. God knows this has been the standard practice since the camera and printing press were invented. No the picture you get shown wasn't the certified original used in the court case. Never has been. Then only problem here is that someone used a different tool to add the department logo to the post and fucked it up.
If this is enough to outrage you I think you may need some Xanax
Re: (Score:1)
They aren't editing an evidence photo, they're editing a copy of an evidence photo
It's not even that. The photo isn't evidence, the objects in the photo are evidence and they'll be going to court. The photo itself was taken specifically for PR purposes, as mentioned in TFA.
Also from TFA:
To remain fully transparent, we will be inviting the news media to come look at the original evidence, so they can see that the evidence does actually exist.
One of my favorite examples (Score:2)
It's another one of those pictures that wouldn't exist in any other civilized country. Then again we shouldn't be criminalizing drugs in the first place. Only reason we did it was so that Richard Nixon could attack his political
Re: (Score:2)
But over and over and over again Americans choose moral panics like the gay trans panics and other nonsense over solid economic policy. And so you take it in the shorts in your daily life
Is it Americans choosing this? Or the political parties?
I used to get a lot of political polling calls, and they'd rarely ask me about anything I cared about. They'd ask about same sex marriage, abortion, and other "moral panics" that you call "nonsense". I don't know what made the political calls stop but it may have been me screaming at the pollster that I didn't care about abortion laws. He was confused at first, thinking that meant I didn't care if abortion was available on demand. I corrected him,
Auto Beautify (Score:5, Insightful)
The article has a comparison of the photo before and after. The department logo was added, and it looks like an "auto beautify" or clean-up pass was that made all the AI artifacts. So far so good.
But they *also* removed some items and tried to disguise the fact that they were removed. It looks like some stickers (maybe?) reading "COOKIES" were edited out. That may have been by an AI "remove this" sort of feature or it may have been by hand. Either way it's a pretty poor job. I could freehand the replacement background (a yellow sticky pad) better than they did. Also, a rubber band was removed for no obvious reason. I can imagine reasons why they might want to remove the stickers, but removal of something as innocuous as a rubber band is baffling. Especially because the rubber band goes in front of one item and behind another translucent item, which means it at least takes some effort to remove. Why bother?
I'm willing to give the police the benefit of the doubt and say that the AI artifacts were unintended. I don't know if they're the result of the sticker removal or if they were put there by a separate auto-beautify feature but I don't think there was any malice intended.
I'm less willing to forgive the sticker removal. I don't know why they were removed, but it should have been done with a black "REDACTED" box so the viewer knows that the image has been modified.
IMHO (and IANAL), any changes at all should be obvious. The department logo should be in an inset box or clearly an overlaid watermark; as it is it looks like it might have been a physical plaque on the wall. Guys, this is an evidence photo. Even though it's (probably) not intended for use in court, you have no business modifying it. Adding a logo or making redactions is fine, as long as it's obvious they're not actually part of the photo. Otherwise, keep your grubby little hands off! If for no other reason than it gives the impression that you're being dishonest.
Re: (Score:2)
That may have been by an AI "remove this" sort of feature or it may have been by hand.
There's nothing hand edited in that photo. Literally every part of it was regenerated with AI, not a single item is original. There would also be zero reason to remove the stickers. This is just AI fucking up.
Re: (Score:3)
Guys, this is an evidence photo.
No, this was a publicity photo. The original photo was for evidence but someone thought by sharing it there could be some good publicity. But so as to have some kind of "ownership" of the photo they wanted the department patch shown. The means they used to do that did more than add the patch, and this was apparently unintentional.
I'm with the other commenters that this is incompetence on the part of some PR people, and not likely any reflection on the chain of custody for evidence that would be used in c
Re: (Score:2)
I agree with your last paragraph. The problem isn't that it was changed, but that the changes weren't revealed. That's why I said that changes (additions or redactions) should be obvious like a blacked-out area. Even for PR purposes.
There was certainly more intentionally changed than the addition of the logo. The "COOKIES" stickers on the right didn't disappear by accident. Someone had to purposefully remove them and touch up the background to hide the removal. Not cool. Whether or not they had a good re
The Prompt (Score:2)
"Please add the police logo to the photo of the evidence on the drugs on the table."
Output: hazy blurry evidence, on drugs
We never realized (Score:1)
Everything is AI now (Score:2)
More importantly, I've been doing this since the late 90's. I had no idea I was using "AI"