This week, the scientific journal Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology published a study that used fake images made with Midjourney, one of the most popular AI image generators.
В articles The open access article explores the relationship between stem cells in mammalian testes and the signaling pathway responsible for mediating inflammation and cancer in cells. The written content of the article does not appear to be falsified, but the most striking aspects are not in the study itself, but in the inaccurate and grotesque images of rat testes, signaling pathways, and stem cells created by artificial intelligence.
An AI-generated diagram of a rat shows a rat with its upper body labeled «sentinel stem cells». What appears to be a very large rat penis is labeled «Split», with insets on the right to highlight the iollotte sserotgomar cell, dck, and Retat. Right, transmits Gizmodo.
According to Frontiers’ editorial guidelines, manuscripts undergo an «initial quality check» by the research integrity team and a processing editor before they go to peer review. In other words, this work was supposedly reviewed by many eyes before the images were published.
To their credit, the researchers note in the article that the images in the paper were created by Midjourney. But Frontiers’ website on publication policy and ethics notes that corrections can be submitted if «there is an error in a figure that does not change the conclusions» or «there are incorrectly labeled figures», among other factors.
The image of the rat is clearly not true, even if you have never cut open a rat’s genitals. But the other pictures in the article may seem true to the untrained eye, at least at first glance. However, even someone who has never opened a biology textbook will see, upon closer inspection, that the captions on each diagram are not entirely in English — a clear sign that the text on the images was generated by artificial intelligence.
The rise in popularity of artificial intelligence has led to scientifically inaccurate images being included in scientific publications and news articles. AI images are easy to create and often visually compelling — but it is difficult for AI to convey all the nuances of scientific accuracy in a diagram or illustration caption.