One of the main problems that artificial intelligence has brought about has to do with a specific fact: the difficulty of distinguishing between what is real and what is not. Not long ago, people uploading videos on TikTok of supposedly homeless people breaking into homes went viral in the United States. Now something similar has happened in Japan, but with different protagonists.
Instead of homeless people, the trend revolves around bears. Perhaps in a country like Spain this fact is difficult to understand, among the country’s fears is not exactly the assault of these animals. But in Japan it is different. A real problem that has multiplied because of something that is not a real problem: content generated by AI.
Japan and AI trends
The data is significant. So far this year, as The Guardian claims, a total of thirteen people have lost their lives due to a striking event: bear attacks. Not only that, there are also figures that indicate that hundreds of them have also suffered injuries, in many cases serious. And what does artificial intelligence have to do with it? Well, a lot, actually.
To the logical paranoia that has to do with the real situation, we must add a particular trend created from tools like ChatGPT. Hundreds of videos have appeared on Japanese social networks simulating similar situations. People being attacked by bears, feeding them or even fighting with them. The problem? That the videos are very realistic.
So much so that many of them, especially at the beginning, were considered authentic. The situation caused alarm to spread throughout the country, and even the authorities and the media had serious problems distinguishing what was true from what was not. What many experts have been denouncing for some time: fake news is going to multiply because of AI.
In the end, when the paranoia began to subside (all in record time), the truth was discovered, which was also overwhelming. Of all the alleged attacks carried out by bears in Japan, 60% were false and carried out with ChatGPT or Sora. Many times, shared on TikTok to gain «likes» or simply to join the trend, if you can call it that.
Things are not what they seem
The main problem with these tendencies, as experts say, no longer has to do with generating sensations of danger that are somewhat exaggerated or imprecise, but with deception. If someone shows themselves playing with a bear on TikTok and it seems true, another person can try to do the same in a real scenario. Needless to say, this wouldn’t be a good idea at all.
Perhaps sooner rather than later people will realize that they cannot believe everything they see, much less when what they see comes from social networks. But for now, the reality is that this custom does not exist, and that more cases like what happened in Japan are going to happen. At least, for quite some time.