Task 5: Exemplary submission

[student’s name withheld]

Explanation of hoax

For my hoax, I chose to use the same hoax that I had initially used in my Task 4 — the Hurricane Harvey freeway shark.

The Hurricane Harvey freeway shark was a myth which originated in 2017, after the devastation of Hurricane Harvey in Texas and Louisiana. It came about after a Twitter user posted an image of what seemed to be a shark swimming next to their car on the freeway in Houston, Texas. The image was soon debunked — discovered to be a common hoax that is spread after a natural disaster occurs. Instead, the original image of the shark was found to have been taken in 2005 by a kayaker off the shore of South Africa, after a great white shark was spotted following them. It was then edited onto an image of a flooded street, and has since been used to spread false news.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/08/27/fact-check-photo-shark-flooded-highway-faked/5646793002/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Shark

My non-AI hoax image

I made this image for Task 4 by superimposing two photographs with Adobe Express.

My AI-generated hoax images and prompts

[Note that you are not required to use more than one AI tool as this student did, but you’ll get more points the more you explore options to improve your results.]

Using DreamStudio, as well as ChatGPT (alongside Canva and Photoshop), I was able to create both an AI-generated image, as well as design a fake news article using what was given to me by ChatGPT.

DreamStudio prompt: “Create an image of a great white shark fin swimming under the water in a flooded freeway road in Houston, Texas.”

— For this prompt, I had to alter my original prompt by adding “shark fin” as well as “under the water” in order to make the generated image both more realistic and placed where I wanted it to be.

While attempting to find an AI-generated image that I liked, I went through numerous different AI programs–Leonardo.AI, DreamStudio, DALL-E, Midjourney, etc. One particular program I found myself having significant trouble with was DALL-E, where I asked it two separate prompts in an attempt to get an image I liked and both times all 4 images provided to me were wildly wrong.

“Create an image of a great white shark swimming under the water in a flooded freeway road in Houston, Texas.”

I really have no idea why this one did not work, for some reason they are floating above the water despite me saying “under the water”??

“Create an image of a great white shark fin swimming under the water in a flooded freeway road in Houston, Texas.”

I believe DALL-E interpreted my “great white shark” statement as a large shark that is white in color, which is strange but still explainable.

Saved web page showing my prompts and results

[student’s zipped file withheld for privacy reasons]