The most reliable AI image detectors can be tricked by simply adding texture to an image — a worrying find as AI disinformation plagues the internet and threatens political campaigns

• Adding grain to AI-generated images makes them harder to identify as fake, the New York Times reports.
• The likelihood of detection drops from 99% to 3.3% when pixelated noise is added to images.

From falsified campaign ads to stolen artwork, AI-generated images have been responsible for a wave of disinformation online in recent months.

Now, the New York Times reports that AI detection software — one of the frontline defenses against the spread of AI-generated disinformation — can be easily fooled by simply adding grain to AI-generated images.

The Times' analysis shows that when an editor adds grain — that is, texture — to an AI-generated photo, the likelihood of software identifying the image as AI-generated goes from 99% to just 3.3%. Even the software Hive — which showed one of the best success rates in the Times' report — could no longer correctly identify an AI-generated photo after editors made it more pixelated.

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As a result, experts warned that detection software should not be the only line of defense for companies trying to combat misinformation and prevent the distribution of these images.

"Every time somebody builds a better generator, people build better discriminators, and then people use the better discriminator to build a better generator," Cynthia Rudin, a computer science and engineering professor at Duke University, told the Times.

The Times' analysis comes at a time when users are increasingly deploying AI-generated misinformation online to influence political campaigns, Insider reported. Ron DeSantis' presidential campaign, for instance, distributed fake images of Donald Trump and Anthony Fauci earlier this month.