This is an extra post prior to posting another in my series of diagrams of the human circulation. This is to warn you about the potential dangers of AI-generated images.
Just to see what I might get, I asked an AI image generator to make an image of the human circulation. This was a generator that had produced nice pictures before, but I had not asked for figures or illustrations. I had hoped to post what I was given. To say that the results were dreadful is an understatement.
While there was some anatomical similarity with the human body, there were subtle inaccuracies and false impressions. AI-generated images must be carefully checked before they are used or relied upon.
I recently heard that two things that AI cannot do are produce an image of a person writing with their left hand and an image of an analogue clock face showing a specific time. Drawing from what is on the internet, AI predominantly finds images of people writing with their right hand and clock faces registering ten-to-two (a standard in advertising). So AI has known limitations, which I’m sure will be overcome.
In my requests, what was particularly bad was the labelling; it was complete gibberish. It consisted of very strange combinations of letters and partial letters. Drawn from the internet, the labels of the images used do not seem to be read as text but taken as part of the image. Connecting the right labels—where there were readable labels—to the appropriate structures was non-existent.
This may only be a temporary thing. This time next year perhaps I should try again. For the purpose of providing figures and illustrations, AI still has a lot of developing to do. In the meantime, students and teachers should be cautious.
