Mont Orford National Park announced on Facebook Tuesday morning that its trails would be closed due to damage from 11 inches of snow that recently fell on the trees. Accompanied by a scenic photo of a snow-covered path with tree branches, the post quickly became the most popular post of the year on the park’s account, garnering more than 1,600 likes.
The problem: The image was generated entirely by artificial intelligence (AI).
This message was removed Wednesday after Radio-Canada contacted the Société des Establishments de Plein Air du Québec (Sépaq) about the issue.
A person in the national park wanted, in good faith, to illustrate an informative publication on the subject of cross-country skiing with a winter landscape. Sépaq media manager Simon Boivin assured that she does not believe that the image could be confused with a real photo.
The instruction will be widely disseminated so that something like this does not happen again, he added.
The comments under this message suggested that most netizens saw nothing but fire.
The scene is still great, bravo to the photographer! one of them shouted.
What a sublime photo! added another.
Open in full screen mode
Most people who commented on the post believed it was a real photo.
Photo: Facebook / Mont Orford National Park
However, some netizens noticed that there was something wrong with this image, which looked more like a painting than a real photo.
Among them is abstract photography lecturer Jean Vigneault.
Most of the people who denounced the publication were photographers because AI-generated images are more easily recognized than other people, Mr. Vigneault said in an interview. This means that the photo represents the park in question. It almost becomes misleading advertising.
We examined all Sépaq Parks Facebook pages and were unable to identify any additional cases of the use of artificial intelligence tools.
With information from Stéphanie Dupuis and Alexis Boulianne
A special program on artificial intelligence will be broadcast on December 7th at 8 p.m. on ICI TÉLÉ and ICI RDI as well as on our digital platforms.
