AI wildlife images risk harming animals, experts warn

Conservationists and researchers warn that realistic AI-generated wildlife images can mislead social media users, put people at risk and harm efforts to protect animals.

A viral black-and-white image appeared to show an orangutan cradling endangered leopard cubs in the jungles of Malaysia's Sabah state, but it was fake. AFP fact-checkers have debunked similar synthetic wildlife visuals, including an elephant shown climbing a tree to escape flooding in Myanmar and a pink dolphin appearing to leap from water in the Philippines.

Experts said images that show wild animals behaving like pets or humans can distort public perceptions. Jose Guerrero-Casado, a zoology professor at Spain's University of Cordoba, said such misunderstandings could lead people to approach animals too closely or interact with them unsafely.

He cited a widely reported January incident in China's Xinjiang region, where a woman was attacked by a rare snow leopard after trying to get closer for a photo. China's forestry department said it increased patrols after the incident and warned people to keep a safe distance from wild animals.

Chris Lewis, a researcher at the wildlife charity Born Free, said AI visuals can increase demand for certain species to be used as tourism photo props, exploited for social media content or kept as pets. Jenny Roberts of WWF said fake online content can also make people doubt real conservation images.

A September study in the journal Conservation Biology, co-authored by Guerrero-Casado, described the rapid spread of AI misinformation and its potential harm to environmental efforts as a major threat. Researchers also warned that AI images could affect people's ability to identify species and create misunderstandings about where animals live and how abundant they are.

Experts writing in Nature warned that AI-generated or manipulated wildlife photos and recordings could damage citizen science platforms used by researchers, and called for stronger authentication and better user education.

Meta and TikTok require users to label realistic visuals that are generated or significantly altered with AI, and say they have tools to automatically label AI-generated content. AFP fact-checkers found multiple wildlife posts without clear labels, including some where users had said in captions that they were fake.