As someone who’s been on the internet since a very young age, as well as having been raised by someone who specializes in Cyber Security, I personally have never really fell for any Internet scams or hoaxes. In general, I’m also just a skeptical person. The rise in Generative AI over the past few years has made me come a bit close, but more so I’ve ended up explaining how certain things are AI to my mother more than anything. Most notably was an AI generated video of some kind of salamander that doesn’t exist. We ended up searching for a few minutes to find the original video that was posted (as of course, it was posted on Instagram, then stolen and reposted to TikTok, then Facebook, and so on and so forth) to confirm our hunch. But more than anything it’s made me sad that my mother who loves animals and biology with her whole heart was still fooled, albeit temporarily, by some video online. 

Personally, I don’t think it was created to do anything outside of create a sensation, it was a weird looking salamander and wanted to gain views and clout from posting something weird and unusual. The main thing I’d recommend to people who want to be sure if something is real or fake, is to check the movement of it if it’s a video. Sometimes AI will have very realistic visuals, but the movement of the creature is just slightly out of the norm. In the case of the salamander video, that is what ticked me off and why my mother and I went to go find its source. Outside of that, images that look “Airbrushed” are often AI, but at this point, AI is getting so good that I’m not sure if that’s a good metric to get focused on.