[imagesource:gencraftai]

The levels of wrong on this are numerous, so be warned.

This week, a scientific journal published research featuring bogus imagery made with Midjourney, one of the most popular AI image generators.

Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology didn’t even publish the inaccurate image of a rat with a massive penis with the correct spelling.

Gizmodo notes that the open-access paper explores the relationship between stem cells in mammalian testes and a signalling pathway responsible for mediating inflammation and cancer in cells – but can all this hard work even be taken seriously now?

While the paper’s written content does not appear to be bogus, its most eye-popping aspects – a grotesque depiction of rat testes, signalling pathways and stem cells – are rubbish.

The AI-generated rat diagram depicts a rat whose upper body is labelled as “senctolic stem cells.” What appears to be a very large rat penis is labelled “Dissilced,” with insets at right to highlight the “iollotte sserotgomar cell,” “dck,” and “Retat.”

Science, everyone:

Image: Guo et al., Front. Cell Dev. Biol. 2024

According to Frontiers’ editor guidelines, many eyes were supposed to have reviewed this work before the images were published. But I guess their ‘eeys’ were wonky.

Furthermore, Frontiers’ site for policies and publication ethics notes that corrections may be submitted if “there is an error in a figure that does not alter the conclusions” or “there are mislabeled figures,” among other factors. The AI-generated imagery certainly seems to fall under those categories.

Even if you’ve never cut open a rat’s genitals, this rat image is glaringly wrong.

Other images in the paper are also nonsense cosplaying as science. While the figures could pass as credible to the untrained eye, at a second glance, you might notice that the labels on each diagram are not quite English—a telltale sign of AI-generated text in imagery.

Illustration: Guo et al., Front. Cell Dev. Biol. 2024

The article was edited by an expert in animal reproduction at the National Dairy Research Institute in India, and it was reviewed by researchers at Northwestern Medicine and the National Institute of Animal Nutrition and Physiology. So how did the wacky images get published?

Hard to tell who will take accountability for this when Midjourney AI made the mistake. The lesson? Not even those with a supposed more discerning eye should overlook AI engines’ ability to pass off BS as real.

In other animal penis science news, scientists have discovered bats with “disproportionately large” penises that don’t fit inside the females’ vaginas as the only mammals known to have sex without penetration.

Live Science notes that mammals usually mate via penetrative sex, but serotine bats (Eptesicus serotinus) have evolved a different strategy:

Instead of inserting their penis into the female’s vagina, males use their oversized genitalia to push aside their partner’s tail sheath, before pressing up against her vulva for up to 12 hours, according to a study published Monday (Nov. 20) in the journal Current Biology.

Footage of this odd copulation showed the males grasping females by the nape and remaining completely still in this embrace for an average of 53 minutes, with the longest interaction lasting almost 13 hours.

This is the first documented evidence of non-penetrative sex, also known as “contact mating,” in mammals, so everyone is really fascinated. To better describe the mating behaviour of serotine bats, the researchers “are trying to develop a bat porn box, which will be like an aquarium with cameras everywhere”.

Talk about a freaky Friday.

[source:gizmodo]