Cute carvings of dogs made by chainsaw artists are flooding Facebook Pages — turns out, they’re AI-generated
Courtesy of 404 Media
- AI-generated images of wood carved dogs are filling up Facebook Pages, 404 Media reports.
- The content seems to be an engagement-bait tactic for spammy pages.
- While real wood carvers are (mostly) unhurt, it shows how AI is being used for spam on Facebook.
When it comes to statues of German shepherds carved exclusively by a chainsaw, you can say it’s not your taste in art — but you can’t say it’s not impressive.
Which I suppose is why chainsaw sculptures are at the nexus of a vast and strange web of Facebook Pages that appear to be churning out AI-generated images of men posing next to chainsaw-made sculptures of dogs.
It’s not totally clear why these pages are doing it, but one common reason for engagement-bait is to build up a page’s following so it can flip the page and use it for advertising.
404 Media went down this bizarre rabbit hole, talking to people who track AI-generated image spam across engagement-bait Facebook Pages.
An actual chainsaw artist named Michael Jones, whose real photo was the origin of the spammy AI versions, spoke to 404 Media, explaining why the whole thing bothers him:
“This is something that is a huge issue for us and other carvers all over the world who are sadly missing out on the rightful credit exposure to their work,” Jones told me, “as well as setting unrealistic expectations when it comes to creating chainsaw carving art or any art for that matter!”
Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment from BI on whether these posts on its Pages platform are in violation of any of its rules for content.
