GET WOKE UP by these nonexistent authors
How an "anti-woke" satirical news site used GAN-generated faces for its authors and social media accounts
News websites with authors with AI-generated faces are all the rage these days, and “anti-woke” satirical news website getwokeup.com is just one of many examples. This website has at least seven alleged authors whose official portraits are StyleGAN-generated faces (a few others use graphics or stock photos). The GAN-generated authors go by the names “Toby P. Gelman”, “Rafe S. Klinger”, “Doreen Trudeau”, “AD Washbro”, “Casey Riley”, “Eliza Fisher”, and “Johnny Jock”, and all of them with the exception of Eliza Fisher have at least a minimal biography. Much of the site’s content is focused on gender issues, and anti-LGBTQ narratives are a recurring theme of the site’s content.
The GAN-generated faces used to represent getwokeup.com authors appear to be cropped versions of images from generated.photos with the watermarks removed. Five of the seven authors (“Toby P. Gelman”, “Rafe S. Klinger”, “Casey Riley”, “Eliza Fisher”, and “Johnny Jock”) can be easily located in the site’s collection of synthetically-generated faces, and the neutral backgrounds of the other two faces suggest that they originated there as well. Several of the images contain obvious artifacts such as nonsensical clothing and hats, unusually shaped or mismatched ears, and anomalies where the hair meets the background or clothing.
Getwokeup.com occasionally features a satirical advice column titled “Karen & Kevin”. As with the authors of the site’s articles, the advice columnists “Karen” and “Kevin” are GAN-generated faces. The neutral backgrounds of the faces suggest that, like the authors’ faces, they were obtained from generated.photos.
The getwokeup.com site has affiliated accounts on multiple social media platforms, and some of these accounts have the same names and GAN-generated faces as the getwokeup.com authors. For example, “Toby P. Gelman” accounts were created on both X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook, and “Rafe S. Klinger” accounts were created on X and Tiktok. Given the limited search features of some of the major platforms (particularly Facebook and Instagram), there are likely more such accounts. The X accounts are both suspended at present, while the Facebook and TikTok accounts are live.
Interestingly, the “Toby P. Gelman” X account (@GelmanProducer) was the second follower of another X account with a GAN-generated profile image with a neutral background, @SteveFares3. This account (now suspended) espoused similar anti-LGBTQ stances to those found in the getwokeup.com site’s articles, and had a habit of replying to other users with false accusations of being “groomers” or “paedos”. Notably, the account’s operator doubled down on presenting the GAN-generated face as a photo of a real person when confronted, and subsequently accused the individual who pointed out the image’s true nature of being a pedophile. While some uses of GAN-generated faces and other synthetic media are benign, insisting that the image is real and attacking the messenger is a clear sign of deceptive intent.
Footnote: Most of the material in this article originally appeared in this X thread. In an apparent effort to further demonstrate that the GAN-faced accounts were being operated in a coordinated fashion, they had a conversation in the replies where they denied being “bots” (an allegation which appeared nowhere in the thread).
Read an article today in WIRED on digital colonialism/child labor in poorer countries who are 'teaching' AI. Let me find the link... Not finding it quickly, but I do see another article on how tech companies are also using prisoners to train their algorithms. Haven't read it yet, but it looks like the same bs: "AI Goes to Jail" by Morgan Meaker in November 2023 issue. The other article may be in there too, I'm just not seeing it at the moment. I read it through Apple News this morning.