For my artifacts of disinformation, I made 3 images that depicted the fictional story of the Pizzagate conspiracy. I used Midjourney to produce fictional surroundings, items, and fictional people. I then used Photoshop to add the faces of the individuals mentioned in my fictional story to the AI-generated pictures along with logos and items that I found on Google to adhere to my story. I then used a variety of tools such as the Dodge tool and Burn tool to blend these in with the generated scenes to make it look as if it is real. I also used the tool generative fill to remove things from the pictures that did not help with the fake story. I chose to make it black and white as it did look the most realistic and believable in this form.

I did make sure to provide a disclaimer to the images and post related. To some degree, it could disinform someone at the surface level or those who don’t know much about AI-generated material such as the older generation. But to the younger audience, it may not be that believable, only because my Photoshop skills are not fantastic as I am still learning. However, I can see how something like this in the wrong hands by someone who has excellent skills could provide a higher level of editing thus disinforming the audience.

AI-generated material and Photoshop can be used to disinform in various ways. Government and state officials can be at risk as making fake images, videos or even recordings can be used to manipulate the public opinions on these officials and therefore alter elections but also how the public generally feels towards these individuals. Cyberattacks by criminals could also use this by making fake emails or posts pretending to be larger companies to vulture off of innocent people. This can also be used to make someone download a particular file to hack their systems by pretending to be a company via emails, stealing logos and email layouts posing as the real deal. Fraudsters can use such tools to obtain financial gain and can also use these materials to make fake documents such as stealing someone’s identity or bank statements to launder money or other various frauds. I do believe having this software readily available does pose a risk of the spread and rise of disinformation. I think individuals or companies need to implement ways to prevent this from happening or even address the issue to educate people firsthand.

By sharing such content on MediaFactory, I do understand that my work published is readily available for others to simply take and use elsewhere for other intentions unknown. Although I have given a disclaimer for my work it is not always the case to be used with whoever decides to use the work I have created. Therefore simply posting online will always have a risk but also ethical concerns by sharing and creating such content to be published here on MediaFactory or just on the web in general.