A publication on Facebook shows a photo of a woman and adds, in the caption, the information that she is the “Minister of Health of Japan”, whose image would have been “modified by AI [Inteligência Artificial]” — a reference to the physiognomic characteristics of the alleged minister. In other cases, this reference to AI is simply not made and the authors of the posts they limit themselves to adding comments on the appearance of the minister, as if in fact the images showed the Japanese ruler.
If, in the first case, the wording can be misleading (and there are several comments that indicate that the information was apprehended as being true), in the remaining cases it is a message with completely false content that ends up having the same result: to induce in error the users of that social network.
In fact, verifying the veracity of this content is quite simple to do: a search for the keywords “health”, “minister” and “Japan” (Japan) in a search engine returns answers that immediately overland the information disseminated in the posts already mentioned.
The head of the Japanese government for Health (and also for Work and Welfare) is called Katsunobu Katō, he is a man, he is 67 years old and, in the current legislature, he took office in August 2022. Before, he had already been in office between September 2019 and September 2020, and between August 2017 and October 2018. This is also the information on the official website of the Japanese government led by Fumio Kishida and who took office in October 2021.
Katsunobu Katō, current Minister of Health of Japan
As for the image of the woman in the analyzed publications, which is presented as a minister of Japan, it was generated using Artificial Intelligence — at the same time, a search for the origin of the image refers to a series of websites with adult content, in some cases accompanied by the indication (also false) that it would be an “too sexy South Korean policy”.
In a first search for the origin of the image, results are obtained from content published in May 2023 on the Russian language site Pikabu. According to an article by Meduza, an independent Russian-language media outlet (and based in Latvia), Pikabu is based in Moscow and is currently an important source of access to (unverified) information by younger generations in Russia. Freely published, the site prioritizes the contents published there through a voting system by the users themselves.
But a more accurate search reveals the true origin of the image: the user’s Twitter account. @AIkawa_AIko_jp2who presents himself as the author of images created using Artificial Intelligence and who asks his followers to suggest new content to be generated.
On April 26 of this year, this user published one of the images which are being disseminated as portraying the Minister of Health of Japan (the image of the Twitter account itself corresponds to the content verified in this article). In the caption of this image, the author mentions that the tweet in which it was published it was “well received” and explains that it is “the image of a beautiful AI woman who resembles a politician (chest size is irrelevant)”. There is also a disclaimer that the author does not intend to “belittle or ridicule real politicians or political organizations”.
The account features dozens of images of Asian-looking women, the overwhelming majority of which reveal an obvious sexual content.
Conclusion
It is false that the image spread in dozens of posts on Facebook show the Minister of Health of Japan. The person in charge of this folder is a 67-year-old man, who assumes these functions for the third time in a Japanese government. The verified image corresponds to content generated using Artificial Intelligence, as the author himself reveals on his Twitter account.
Thus, according to the Observer classification system, this content is:
WRONG
In Facebook’s rating system this content is:
FALSE: The main content claims are factually inaccurate. This option usually corresponds to “false” or “mostly false” ratings on fact-checker sites.
NOTE: this content was selected by the Observer as part of a fact checking partnership with Facebook.
Source: https://observador.pt/factchecks/fact-check-imagem-mostra-ministra-da-saude-do-japao/
