Fake AI image causes sudden stock market drop in the S&P 500

This came across a news feed on my Telegram account this morning, so I started digging. At first I thought maybe is was fake news about fake news, but it seems to be legit. I'll include several links to the story below.

I first linked from the Telegram feed to an article at The Gateway Pundit. The headline read (note: the following is a live link):
BREAKING: STOCK MARKET Takes Brief Tumble After Fake AI-Generated Photo on Fake Bloomberg Twitter Account Shows Explosion at Pentagon This Morning

The article lead reads:

A fake (verified blue check-mark) Bloomberg Twitter account posted an apparently AI-generated photo of an explosion at the Pentagon this morning, and the stock market reacted.

The following screen capture accompanies the article:


Accoring to The Gateway Pundit:

100 Percent Fed Up reports – The reportedly AI-generated image showed a fake explosion at the Pentagon this morning that spread like wildfire across social media platforms, causing a brief selloff on the US Stock market this morning. According to the Kobeissi Letter, there was a $500 billion market cap swing and a drop of 500 points on the S&P in a 30 minute span, as a result of the fake AI image.

The report about the effects on the stock market was provided in a tweet by the Kobeissi Letter, a self-described “industry-leading commentary on the global capital markets.”

You can see the comment from The Kobeissi Letter here.

@N_Waters89 recognized some defects in the image and quickly identified it as having been AI generated, but apparently the entire friggin' stock market wasn't quite as observant.

Arlington Fire & EMS also quickly debunked the image.

The Gateway Pundit also included a link to a report on The New York Post.

Reasoning, as often did my now-deeased step-father, that "nobody is that stupid," I initially thought that the report of a fake image causing this kind of upset in the stock market was itself the fake, but it looks like it really happened.

If a really crappy AI mock-up like this can cause the S&P 500 to plunge, where in hell are we headed as this thing gets smarter and better at what it does?

What happens when "bad actors" decide to start using this medium to really do irreversible damage?

This is gonna get real interesting real quickly.
:

a reply to: incoserv
Not saying it didnt happen, just saying its not doom porn, or even anything strange for the market.
The screenshot i've included begins March 30th to present tracking the S&P 500
as you can see the incident, which reportedly occured yesterday, is barely noticable
To note, this is the 30 min. timeframe, which means each individual bar denotes 30 min. of trading

originally posted by: datguy
a reply to: incoserv
Not saying it didnt happen, just saying its not doom porn, or even anything strange for the market.
The screenshot i've included begins March 30th to present tracking the S&P 500
as you can see the incident, which reportedly occured yesterday, is barely noticable
To note, this is the 30 min. timeframe, which means each individual bar denotes 30 min. of trading

Well, maybe the effect was not drastic, but the fact that even such a poorly created AI image was able to do anything tothe market (had it been positive or negative), is scary.

Not "doom porn," but just a harbinger of things to come. One can "bury one's head in the sand" and pretend that it does not matter, and today it may seem not to; but tomorrow ... we'll see.

a reply to: incoserv

As for how AI is getting a lot of traction these days i will leave you with these two wonderful websites
SKY NET
Cyberdyne systems

a reply to: incoserv

There were also alot of government and national reports due yesterday which always has a "dramatic effect"
You should see when any one from the FED talks about the economy. you can plot their talking points on the DOW and S&P like the puppeteers they are

Also, according to your "source" that was linked in the OP
there was a market cap swing of over 500b, but the current market cap of the S&P is only 118B
check your sources

S&P market cap

a reply to: datguy

[Before they died, my parents told me stories about how the world once was; what it was like long before I was born; before the war with the machines. They remembered a green world, vast and beautiful, filled with laughter and hope for the future. It's a world I never knew. By the time I was born, all this was gone.

"Skynet," a computer program designed to automate missile defense. It was supposed to protect us, but that's not what happened. August 29th, 1997, Skynet woke up. It decided all of humanity was a threat to its existence. It used our own bombs against us. Three billion people died of nuclear fire.

Survivors called it Judgement Day. People lived like rats in shadows, hiding, starving, or worse, captured and put into camps for extermination. I was born after Judgement Day, into a broken world ruled by the machines. The worst were infiltration units that posed as humans. We called them Terminators.

[CUE DRUMS]
I mean thanks, Yonko Hunter D.

a reply to: datguy

You're like my son. I mentioned to him once that the Fed was hiking interest rates (he holds a pile of credit card debt), and he spent two days bitchin' about how I was scared of the Fed.

It is what it is, buddy. Ignore it all you want, but ...

a reply to: incoserv

Poor Ai getting a bad rap lately. Why not blame Twitter?

Photoshop still exists... 😂

originally posted by: imitator
a reply to: incoserv

Poor Ai getting a bad rap lately. Why not blame Twitter?

Photoshop still exists... 😂

I think that it has potential to go a lot deeper than that. But the big problem is the much easier access to this kind of stuff compounded with the fact that most people are just stupid and gullible (e.g., the drop in the S&P 500 on an obviously fake image), and there's potential for real problems.

But, hey, I'm just a scardy cat.

a reply to: incoserv

I think you have been attacked many times about your beliefs, so much so that you fail to remain objective and automatically assault anyone who doesn't agree with you.

You mistook my disliking for your source, which was a lie ... intentional or otherwise, as an attack on you personally.

i called out your sources falicy, not yours. I in fact do care about AI and its implications, but i am years past fear and personal insults. in fact if you could find my old account here and access some of my posts from pre 2005 ish (it was before i moved to florida), then you would see that i too was once an alarmist, always frantic to point out the potential threat.
Funny what 20 years of being wrong can do i guess....

In any case, since you are so afraid of AI, here is an interesting article on Googles project "MAVEN"
I do recall an article that google has since placed this AI under high security on a boat somewhere, disconnected from the world ( at the time it was docked in southern california somewhere). but alas i cannot find that specific article.

3 years after the MAVEN uproar

IF i were in my old form, and still chasing ELEnin or planet X around the skys
i would dare say this new AI front, is all a distraction from the real threat

Edit to add: I am afraid of the FED

If this really did happen, one of our federal agencies needs to investigate who was behind this and set some president for prosecution of people for misusing AI. It isn't much different than yelling "fire" in a crowded theater. In its current state, AI is just a dumb tool that waits for someone to ask it to do something and it happily complies. If/when AI starts posting fake pictures on it's own just to freak people out, then we can worry.

originally posted by: datguy
a reply to: incoserv

I think you have been attacked many times about your beliefs, so much so that you fail to remain objective and automatically assault anyone who doesn't agree with you.

You mistook my disliking for your source, which was a lie ... intentional or otherwise, as an attack on you personally.

i called out your sources falicy, not yours. I in fact do care about AI and its implications, but i am years past fear and personal insults. in fact if you could find my old account here and access some of my posts from pre 2005 ish (it was before i moved to florida), then you would see that i too was once an alarmist, always frantic to point out the potential threat.
Funny what 20 years of being wrong can do i guess....

In any case, since you are so afraid of AI, here is an interesting article on Googles project "MAVEN"
I do recall an article that google has since placed this AI under high security on a boat somewhere, disconnected from the world ( at the time it was docked in southern california somewhere). but alas i cannot find that specific article.

3 years after the MAVEN uproar

IF i were in my old form, and still chasing ELEnin or planet X around the skys
i would dare say this new AI front, is all a distraction from the real threat

Edit to add: I am afraid of the FED

You are the one who - like my son - is saying that I'm "afraid."

I'm not. Not even an "alarmist." Just sitting on the sidelines and watching the whole dod and pony show play out.

a reply to: incoserv

so what is your opinion of the Google Maven AI situation? I'm pretty sure that both google and the government (since they are both the same anyway) have NOT stopped working on this.
and i am still trying to find that article about google locking up its AI (i could be wrong about it being THIS particular version)

It's actually quite scary that the market could be so quickly and easily affected by some fake news. Not for me personally on a moment's notice but scary as in that there was any reaction at all. And the ripple effect it could have caused if it had gained more momentum while the fake source was held as valid information. After all, look what the Steele Dossier did to this country. Even though it wasn't sourced from AI, it COULD have been. I don't think we should quickly write this off as a minor irritant or nothing burger. We will soon see how powerful AI will become. Afterall, according to SciFI authors and Hollywood, our race will be quickly and easily destroyed and so far, I've not seen anything that suggests otherwise.

a reply to: StoutBroux

That's what I'm getting at. Not doom porn. Not running scared. But understanding what the implications are.

Ai didn't do it. Including ai in the story is like blaming Photoshop...