Manipulert bilde av av en sel som kveles av en plastpose.

Some go a little further than others to reinforce their message. The marine environmental protection organisation Sea Shepherd uses moving imagery made with the help of artificial photorealism in its illustrations about plastic in the ocean*. This image is computer-generated. It does not depict a real event. Today, such images can be generated by anyone in just a matter of seconds with the help of artificial intelligence. (Read more on the case in this Norwegian news story)

The campaign plays on the apparent realism of the images. We see an almost photographic illustration of the animal's suffering and the plastic over its head as a result of careless human littering. The image is fictitious and cannot be used as documentation. Still, judging from the comments sections on a tweet that involves a similar image from the same campaign, Sea Shepherd seems to be getting the desired message across. Many appear to see the picture as proof of the consequences of our harm to nature. The lines between illustration and documentation are very blurred in the flood of images we are exposed to today.

*Illustration: Sea Shepherd. (2019). Seashepherdglobal. facebook.com

Image manipulation in science - does it occur?

Even in scientific texts, images may on rare occasions be manipulated so that research results appear more positive or certain than they actually are. Although this is rare, it is important to know that such fraud occurs.

See this article in Nature for more examples of image manipulation in scientific articles. The images below are taken from the article.

Are you able to detect the manipulation?

Image: Geng, S., Zhang, X., Chen, J., Liu, X., Zhang, H., Xu, X., Ma, Y., Li, B., Zhang, Y., Bi, Z., & Yang, C. (2014 RETRACTED). The Tumor Suppressor Role of miR-124 in Osteosarcoma. PLOS ONE, 9(6), e91566. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0091566

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