But maybe nothing is wrong with the photo. Maybe Furey is saying that having a third arm will make you more prosperous. Vote for him and get another arm!
Note: The link to the original version of the campaign platform no longer works because it has been updated. Care to guess why it was updated?
Toronto is having a by-election for mayor on June 26, 2023. There are an absurd 102 candidates. One of these candidates is Anthony Furey, whose About Anthony page on his web site says he is “a highly respected journalist. . .” But if you run that very web page through GPTZero, it says that his About page “is likely to be written entirely by AI.” By comparison, both of my About Us pages are “likely to be written entirely by a human.” And they were ;-)
All politicians are terrible when it come to web design, graphic design, policy wording, photography, etc. That’s why some will hire professionals to get the job done right. Sadly though, some politicians choose to go cheap and cut corners and, as we all know, you get what you pay for.
Furey claims that, as mayor, he will create jobs and renew prosperity. Shouldn’t he have created jobs by hiring a photographer, a page editor, a copy editor, or even just a proof reader for his campaign platform?
How could you miss the AI-generated mistakes in the above photo? Didn’t Furey even bother to look at his own platform? If elected, will he bother to read city documents?
No Human Interest
Furey’s campaign platform includes other AI-generated images and some free stock photos (no credit lines given). There are a few real photos but some are poorly cropped and poorly prepped.
Why are there no photos of Furey with anyone? He stands alone, sits alone, walks alone. Wasn’t it possible to humanize the guy by having him interact with someone, anyone?
Stock pictures and AI-generated images do not create human interest. Only real photos of real people with real stories get attention. Every journalist knows this. They teach it in journalism school. And remember, people look before they read. Authentic photos are important and they teach this not only in journalism school but also in public relations courses. Wait a minute, isn’t being a politician like being in public relations?
And what is that background? A subway, a shopping mall, a city street?
Despite Furey’s background in journalism, he chose to use many fake images and free stock photos rather than use reality. As mayor, will he be in the real world or the fake world? Will he make stuff up the same way he used AI to make up photos?
Journalism ethics say that all illustrations must be labelled as such to avoid misleading the readers. Yet his policy booklet intentionally has no credit lines or disclaimers for the images.
His AI-generated images bear no resemblance to Toronto. Does the city’s reality not meet his messaging needs?
Authenticity Builds Trust
When politicians and businesses use cheap stock pictures or AI-generated images without proper thought, they will always shoot themselves in the foot. When you go cheap and cut corners, you fool no one but yourself.
The public already distrusts politicians and big corporations. Why give them more reason for distrust? Why mislead the public?
Furey uses the hashtag #wecanfixthis. He has some good ideas to fix Toronto but one wonders why he didn’t first fix his own campaign booklet. If you can’t be trusted to do a 42-page booklet properly, how can you be trusted to run a big city?
This is what happens when you go cheap. You end up with someone who doesn’t know how to produce a PDF properly. This is one of two photos that were included in the campaign platform PDF but not immediately visible in the booklet.
great analysis Warren. I could only see the third arm on the woman, and the weird missing hand? on the bearded dude. What else is wrong?
p.s. long time, no see…
I have the uncropped version of this image (if you download the policy pdf, you can extract all the uncropped images).
The woman on the left:
1. Obviously an extra arm.
2. The extra arm has a mismatched shirt sleeve.
3. Her extra hand has either an extra long baby finger and/or an extra knuckle or two.
4. Her “real” left hand, which is partially cropped in the above photo, has an extra finger under her cropped-off elbow and the hand is bent at an odd angle. Her hand goes both straight under her arm and also bends up her arm.
The bearded man on the right:
5. His hands and arms are joined together in front of him inside a weird sweater sleeve.
6. A third hand comes out of nowhere and rests on his bicep.
7. His right eye is pointed too far toward the woman and it’s too bright. The right eye seems to be a copy of his left eye.
8. His shirt has no buttons
9. The depth of field is wrong. Even at a shallow depth of field, some of the woman should be in focus. At the very least, her left shoulder and left hair should be in focus and his left shoulder should be out of focus, unless the image is trying to simulate a tilt-shift lens.
Of course if this was a real photo shot by a professional, the woman would have been the main focus since she has the stronger expression and gesture and she’s got better eyes with the catchlights. The fact that the man is looking at her means she is the centre of attention of the picture.
10. What’s on top of the papers in front of her? A pen and a ?