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The Beautiful Illusion …<\/h2>\r\n
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<\/p>\r\nThere have always been those little exaggerations, omissions, and embellishments aimed at presenting oneself in a slightly better light than a neutral perspective would allow. It starts with minor tweaks and doesn’t stop at major manipulations. <\/br>\r\nIn the equine world, people used to retouch photos in the past as well\u2014altering backgrounds or removing a fly from a horse’s nose. Nobody minded that, as it didn’t distort reality. When ‘Photoshop’ kept improving, it became possible to give a horse a ‘dish’ where there barely was one\u2014and that’s when things started getting critical. Today, however, with the help of AI (Artificial Intelligence), things are possible that wouldn’t have been dreamed of 10 or 20 years ago. <\/br>\r\nWhen I commissioned the AI-altered photos for our feature ‘Original or Fake?’, I never thought they would turn out ‘this good.’ Or so frighteningly distorted. And it doesn’t stop with photos. Videos, too, are being generated with AI to look shockingly ‘real.’ Gone are the days when you could easily spot AI photos because a hand sometimes had six fingers, or by perspective inaccuracies and gait flaws in the horse. AI learns fast! Often too fast for the human brain to keep up. <\/br>\r\nBut the use of AI doesn’t stop at photography\u2014translations, too, are lightning fast! Admittedly, I have used AI for translations myself, but I use it to save time and only for languages I speak myself, allowing me to verify the results. Because even there, the strangest ‘translation errors’ have occurred!<\/br>\r\nEntire texts can also be written ‘quite easily’ using AI. However, anyone who blindly trusts the pseudo-facts contained within without meticulously researching everything commits a betrayal of their craft. I put this to the test and asked Gemini: ‘Which are the best endurance horse sires?’ Among many correct sires and lines like Persik, Aziz de Gargassan, etc., it was also claimed that the Marbach State Stud had ‘provided a valuable foundation for endurance breeding with Dahoman (Shagya)’\u2014yet Marbach has never bred with a Dahoman. The danger therefore stems from ‘fake news’ cleverly hidden between actual facts. Because the truly fatal thing is: it always reads entirely convincingly; the AI defends its claims until you confront it with its errors and misinformation. Unlike many humans, however, it always remains polite and admits its mistakes. But that is of no use if you, as a human, do not notice the error, simply believe the AI, and take the assertion at face value.<\/br>\r\nI find myself wondering more and more frequently: what does all this do to us as a society? When no one can believe a photo, a video, or the printed word anymore? Or conversely, when all of this is believed too naively, and people fall for fake news? The manipulation of entire societies has never been as massive as it is today. And so easy! <\/br>\r\nPandora’s box has been opened, so it is now up to us to learn how to deal with these new developments. We must learn where to find reliable information and unmanipulated photos. As far as this magazine is concerned, I will continue to make every effort to provide exactly that (or label it accordingly).<\/br>\r\nStay vigilant!<\/br>\r\nGudrun Waiditschka<\/em>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Beautiful Illusion … There have always been those little exaggerations, omissions, and embellishments aimed at presenting oneself in a slightly better light than a neutral perspective would allow. It starts with minor tweaks and doesn’t stop at major manipulations. In the equine world, people used to retouch photos in the past as well\u2014altering backgrounds … <\/p>\n