Have you ever been fooled by Hurricane Shark, the 14-year-old photoshopped image appearing to show a shark submerged below the waterline on a flooded freeway, and usually posted during hurricanes by some attention-starved person on social media? Well what if the shark were a wolf? And what if it were made with AI rather than photoshop? And what if the person who confessed to doing it were facing hard time in the slammer?
As you may have guessed, that wolf thing wasn’t actually a hypothetical. According to Agence France-Presse (via the Straits Times in this case) some guy in his 40s in South Korea confessed to doing it “just for fun.” But according to a story in Yahoo News, the charges he’s now facing carry a possible sentence of five years in prison and a fine equivalent to $6,700—honestly a pretty chill fine to accompany a five-year prison sentence.
The police in the Korean city of Daejeon said the following according to Yahoo:
“A single AI-manipulated image delayed the capture of the wolf by as many as nine days. […] The prolonged deployment of police and fire personnel caused significant disruption to their primary duty of protecting the public.”
Apparently after this particular wolf, a zoo animal named Neukgu, burrowed out of his zoo enclosure on April 8, news reports included the AI-generated image showing the wolf trotting down what appears to be a city roadway. This was evidently so misleading—though it’s not immediately clear why—that it dragged out the search for days and days.
Here’s a state-affiliated report from Yonhap News Agency that includes the AI generated image without correction:
That report notes that the wolf’s location was confirmed three times, on April 9, 13, and 16. Whatever damage the AI-generated image ostensibly did to the process, it must have happened early on.
The long search apparently also triggered a Neukgu craze on social media in South Korea. By the time Neukgu was finally tracked down and taken back to the zoo, Daejeon had an unofficial new mascot, and a famous local bakery couldn’t keep its Neukgu-themed bread in stock.
It’s not clear from English language reports exactly why the AI-generated image allegedly threw off the search, or that it was instrumental in contributing to the craze. For what it’s worth, footage of Neukgu’s eventual capture suggests he was found out in the wilderness somewhere, not in the middle of urban Daejeon.
The escape led to at least one elementary school closure, and prompted local authorities to deploy hundreds of emergency workers armed with drones and thermal imaging equipment. Apparently however, it was a phoned-in tip that led to Neukgu’s eventual apprehension.
English (US) ·