Anyone who looks at a social media feed with any regularity is likely familiar with the deluge of fabricated images and videos now circulating online. Some are harmless curiosities (other than the resource use). Others are more troubling. Among the most consequential are AI-generated depictions of wildlife, which are beginning to distort how people understand animals, their behavior and the risks they pose, Mongabay contributor Sean Mowbray reported. Wildlife imagery has long been embellished, staged or misrepresented, sometimes for effect, sometimes for attention. What has changed is the speed, scale, plausibility and ease with which all three now combine. Artificial intelligence allows convincing scenes to be produced quickly, cheaply and without specialist skill, often by people with no connection to wildlife at all. A lion appears where no lions live. A leopard stalks a shopping mall. An eagle carries off a child. To an expert, the errors are visible. To most viewers, they are not. This matters because wildlife conservation rests heavily on public perception. When AI-generated videos exaggerate danger or invent attacks, they can inflame anxieties that already exist. In places where farmers contend with real predators, false sightings can provoke retaliation against species that were never involved. Other fabrications pull in the opposite direction. Videos showing wild animals behaving like pets or companions encourage sentimental interpretations of species that are neither domesticated nor safe. Normalizing close contact with wildlife can feed demand for exotic pets, a trade that already threatens many species. What looks charming on a screen…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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