Scientists aghast at bizarre AI rat with huge genitals in peer-reviewed article

3 years ago by blakestacey to c/techtakes

It's unclear how such egregiously bad images made it through peer-review.

Appall and scorn ripped through scientists' social media networks Thursday as several egregiously bad AI-generated figures circulated from a peer-reviewed article recently published in a reputable journal. Those figures—which the authors acknowledge in the article's text were made by Midjourney—are all uninterpretable. They contain gibberish text and, most strikingly, one includes an image of a rat with grotesquely large and bizarre genitals, as well as a text label of "dck."

A dck pck, if you will.

Count me among the "some scientists online" who "questioned whether the text was also AI-generated". I mean, it's a disjointed mess. Right off, we get this:

The term “stem cell” was first coined in 1901 by Regaud

Um, no. But if that could be taken for human error, what about a sentence like this:

They were physically sheared and digested with a solution of DnaseI, hyaluronidase, collagenase, and trypsin using a two-step enzymatic digestion method in which the digestive enzymes included DnaseI, hyaluronidase, collagenase, and trypsin.

Just a bit before that, the text does a swerve into what sounds like a specific experiment, which doesn't fit with its surroundings and is very strange in a review article. My guess is the whole thing was made by stitching together LLM responses.

The publisher, Frontiers Media, is not exactly held in high regard overall.

bitofhope 30 points 3 years ago

Here's the pic in its full glory.

AI generated illustration of a rat with a massive schlong in cross-section and misplaced and misspelled captions: "sentollc stem cells", "Dissilced", "dislocctal stem ells" with the first letter s mirrored, "Rat", "Testtomcels", "dck", "Retat", "iollotte sserotgomar cell", "Spermatocial syem cells", and "Sterrm cells" with the last letters smeared together into some kind of quad-hump letter m

Tag yourself, I'm Testtomcels

path: 0 7598328, hotness: undefined, score: 30, children: 8

bitofhope 19 points 3 years ago

An AI illustration of something vaguely biotechnological with lots of incomprehensible labels. Looks a bit like a circuit board.

This one from the same is also funny

path: 0 7598328 7598457, hotness: undefined, score: 19, children: 3

self 18 points 3 years ago

all leftists care about is propronounization stat protemns, translocation, and posting on DMmer

path: 0 7598328 7598457 7598909, hotness: undefined, score: 18, children: 0

acausal_masochist 10 points 3 years ago

Reminds me of the plastic placemats I ate off of as a toddler.

path: 0 7598328 7598457 7614675, hotness: undefined, score: 10, children: 0

Syn_Attck 2 points 2 years ago

Jak stats and prom, what a night.

path: 0 7598328 7598457 9420570, hotness: undefined, score: 2, children: 0

self 11 points 3 years ago

di>locttal stem ells was my father’s name. please, call me dck

like fuck can you imagine looking at nothing but results like these and believing “yep these are the glimmerings of AGI, what a revolutionary technology”

path: 0 7598328 7598740, hotness: undefined, score: 11, children: 0

fasterandworse 9 points 3 years ago

this will be in a future gallery exhibition about the beginning of the Art Cynique movement

path: 0 7598328 7609776, hotness: undefined, score: 9, children: 0

sailor_sega_saturn 8 points 3 years ago

I go by many names, but you may call me Iollotte.

path: 0 7598328 7598539, hotness: undefined, score: 8, children: 0

sc_griffith 7 points 3 years ago

bond voice I'm retat. rat retat.

path: 0 7598328 7615878, hotness: undefined, score: 7, children: 0

gnomicutterance 21 points 3 years ago

path: 0 7595502, hotness: undefined, score: 21, children: 4

blakestacey 12 points 3 years ago

"Aghast"? No, more like two or three ghast, at least

path: 0 7595502 7595672, hotness: undefined, score: 12, children: 3

gnomicutterance 11 points 3 years ago

path: 0 7595502 7595672 7595728, hotness: undefined, score: 11, children: 1

self 10 points 3 years ago

I’m fairly sure those are the constituent parts of the rat dick as labeled by the AI, yes

path: 0 7595502 7595672 7595728 7595860, hotness: undefined, score: 10, children: 0

bitofhope 7 points 3 years ago

So bighast, perhaps even polyghast?

path: 0 7595502 7595672 7608814, hotness: undefined, score: 7, children: 0

V0ldek 17 points 3 years ago

According to researchers referenced in a 2015 blog post quoted by Allison and James Kaufman in the 2018 book Pseudoscience: The Conspiracy Against Science, "Frontiers has used an in-house journals management software that does not give reviewers the option to recommend the rejection of manuscripts" and the "system is setup to make it almost impossible to reject papers". source

Ah yes, pear reviw.

path: 0 7607766, hotness: undefined, score: 17, children: 1

bitofhope 10 points 3 years ago

Recommend publication?
>yes
later

path: 0 7607766 7608957, hotness: undefined, score: 10, children: 0

blakestacey 13 points 3 years ago

And it's been retracted:

Following publication, concerns were raised regarding the nature of its AI-generated figures. The article does not meet the standards of editorial and scientific rigor for Frontiers in Cell and Development Biology; therefore, the article has been retracted.

This retraction was approved by the Chief Executive Editor of Frontiers. Frontiers would like to thank the concerned readers who contacted us regarding the published article.

path: 0 7613679, hotness: undefined, score: 13, children: 2

sailor_sega_saturn 13 points 3 years ago

At least they didn't claim to have "high standards", only "standards"!

path: 0 7613679 7617938, hotness: undefined, score: 13, children: 0

froztbyte 7 points 3 years ago

That wording is a work of art

path: 0 7613679 7613712, hotness: undefined, score: 7, children: 0

dgerard 9 points 3 years ago

Frontiers Media is the second entry of the "don't cite this BS" list for Wikipedia.

path: 0 7617496, hotness: undefined, score: 9, children: 0

self 9 points 3 years ago

A dck pck, if you will.

I am so glad it wasn’t just my brain that went there

I read an article about this on mastodon earlier, but somehow it seems like it took a long time for anyone to read the text of the paper and realize that’s garbage too

path: 0 7592919, hotness: undefined, score: 9, children: 0

jonhendry 9 points 3 years ago

I'm not sure the "frontiers in" journals are all that reputable.

path: 0 7592584, hotness: undefined, score: 9, children: 1

blakestacey 8 points 3 years ago

My informal impression is that they range from "OK" to "... the Hell?!".

path: 0 7592584 7592763, hotness: undefined, score: 8, children: 0

jonhendry 8 points 3 years ago

To be fair though rodents can have pretty huge balls. Like dragging on the ground behind them huge.

path: 0 7593005, hotness: undefined, score: 8, children: 3

sc_griffith 9 points 3 years ago

same with our brave soldiers. god bless

path: 0 7593005 7605231, hotness: undefined, score: 9, children: 0

Communist 7 points 3 years ago

have you seen the photo because we're talking so big that the rat can't reach its little feet to the ground huge

path: 0 7593005 7593199, hotness: undefined, score: 7, children: 1

blakestacey 6 points 3 years ago

"How long is't ago, Jack, since thou sawest thine own knee?"

path: 0 7593005 7593199 7594950, hotness: undefined, score: 6, children: 0

swlabr 7 points 3 years ago

Funny, when I ask chatgpt to draw a rationalist, the same thing pops up.

path: 0 7629283, hotness: undefined, score: 7, children: 0

CommanderCloon 5 points 3 years ago

New ppb for Hexbear users?

path: 0 7612082, hotness: undefined, score: 5, children: 0

techtakes

@awful.systems

login for more options

Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.

This is not debate club. Unless it’s amusing debate.

For actually-good tech, you want our NotAwfulTech community

go to feed...

techtakes

@awful.systems

login for more options

Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.

This is not debate club. Unless it’s amusing debate.

For actually-good tech, you want our NotAwfulTech community

go to feed...