It occurred to me when I posted about the AI chat app, FishGuru, getting shut down that I haven’t posted much about AI and fishkeeping. Why?
I have been waiting to see how AI gets leveraged into the hobby. AI “slop” is already rearing its ugly head, and it’s just a matter of time before people with nothing better to do start populating the Web with AI-produced images of non-existent cichlids. In fact, if it’s not happening already, some unscrupulous fish sellers will undoubtedly turn to AI to produce fake images of cichlids to enhance their sales. Yes, there are already unscrupulous fish sellers out there using false information to sell fish. Sad but true.
For all of the good generative AI (genAI) can and is doing, there are those whose every intent is to use it for nefarious reasons. It is inevitable. What can we do? About the only sure way to reduce or eliminate such mal intent is self-policing by the community. When you see it, call it out. If you see a vendor or hobbyist using AI generated, false photos for any type of financial or other gain, call them out.
Unfortunately, the majority of “victims” in these scenarios will be the newcomers and those entering the hobby after a long hiatus. They may not know the difference between an AI generated image and a real one. In time, generative AI will become good enough to fool even the most discerning eye.
But it doesn’t stop with images. Plenty of people are already leveraging genAI text, which has its own problems.
Not understanding exactly how genAI works isn’t a barrier to its usage. However, understanding it does provide context for how the genAI text and images you read/see are constructed. One of the best explanations of genAI that I have read is this one.
For the record, none of the posts you read here are (or will ever be) generated by AI. Nor will I ever knowingly post AI generated images of fish. I write every single word myself unless it’s an interview or I quote someone or another source. However, because this blog is public, the content does become part of the corpus of data used by genAI tools to produce results.