Recently, the Vancouver police in Canada posted a set of photos of drug raids on social media in an attempt to show the results of an operation in the Commercial-Broadway area. However, they fell into a whirlpool of public opinion because the pictures were labeled "made with AI." The incident quickly raised public doubts about whether the police were using generative artificial intelligence to "beautify their records," and was criticized as a typical case of "AI slop."
It is reported that this set of photos was originally used to cooperate with the police report, emphasizing that during the welfare payment week, the Vancouver Police Department "made significant progress" in targeting drug trafficking and street nuisance in the Commercial-Broadway area, making multiple arrests within 24 hours. However, not only does the picture have an obvious "made with AI" mark, but there are also detailed issues such as incorrect marking of cash denominations. For example, some CAD 50 notes were written as CAD 20, triggering strong distrust in the authenticity and handling of the pictures.
As criticism continued to escalate, the Vancouver police first responded by saying that they had indeed used "software" to edit the names of those involved in the case, trying to classify the use of AI as a simple privacy measure. However, many netizens and media pointed out that judging from the overall visual effects and text annotations, the image has obviously been deeply modified beyond "name-smearing", and is more like regenerating or reconstructing a live shot through AI tools.
As public opinion intensified, the police subsequently deleted the original batch of pictures with the words "made with AI" and replaced them with a new set of photos. The new version no longer showed the AI mark. Despite this, the public is still highly skeptical about "which version of the old and new photos is the real on-site record." Some people on social platforms directly asked whether the police were comparing the so-called "real photos" with previous "AI junk content" to cover up the initial improper practices.
This incident also caused the Vancouver Police Department to be included in the list of organizations that "rely on AI spam content to artificially boost performance" by many technology and media comments. Some analysts have pointed out that the credibility of law enforcement agencies is highly dependent on the authenticity of the evidence presented. Once there is a dispute that even the photos of the items involved in the case are suspected of being generated by AI or over-retouched, it will inevitably weaken the public's trust in their action reports.
The report also mentioned that this is not an isolated case. Enterprises and the marketing industry are collectively increasing investment in AI content generation tools, hoping to reduce costs and increase output. However, according to previous relevant surveys, only about 26% of consumers surveyed expressed a positive attitude towards this type of AI-generated content. Mainstream users do not have a high tolerance for "AI spam content" and instead have more stringent requirements for transparency and authenticity.
In this "overturn" case of the Vancouver Police Department, the initial failure to remove the "made with AI" mark became the trigger, which also exposed the agency's technical and regulatory shortcomings in the use of generative AI. Current public opinion generally believes that, especially graphic content related to law enforcement and public power, if AI-generated or heavily retouched images continue to be randomly mixed in the absence of clear rules and public instructions, it will inevitably aggravate public suspicion of official information.