THE WHITE HOUSE used a photo that was digitally altered with Google AI tools in its PR campaign against resistance to the federal agents’ assault on Minnesota, according to a Google detection system that confirms whether the tech giant’s AI tools were used to alter a photo.
In the original photo, local civil rights activist Nekima Levy Armstrong was shown being escorted by authorities after her arrest in connection to a protest against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement at Cities Church in Saint Paul, Minnesota.
The version published by the White House’s official X account showed an image that had been altered to make it appear as if Levy Armstrong were openly weeping.
“I was there when they arrested her, and she definitely wasn’t crying — she was calm, rational, and dignified,” said Jordan Kushner, an attorney for Levy Armstrong. “This is part and parcel of a fascist regime where they literally invent reality to serve their fascist agenda.”
According to an Intercept analysis using Google SynthID — a program that identifies hidden markers used by Google AI tools on photos — the photo had been altered with the tech giant’s generative AI tools. (Google declined to comment.)
I hate hate hate Google, but I don’t want to get a new email, host my own photos, and cloud server. Hell, I don’t even know how nor have the time to learn, but if I had an alternative I would switch.
Fuck Google.
There’s a lot of alternatives, try googling it. /s Tuta mail for email, it’s Germany based and reasonably priced. Jotta cloud for files and photos, it’s Norwegian based. And Qwant for a search engine, it’s also EU based.
Clear your login data and cookies on all your devices. As you use your device with different logins just force yourself to do “change email” after each one as you use them. It will be annoying for like the first day. You’ll randomly remember “oh yeah, I still have Gmail for my electric bill that’s on auto pay”. It’s fine. It doesn’t need to happen in one day.
Porting Drive and Photos is more annoying and time consuming. But that’s just a night with a beer or two and a guide you can find online. All of which will offer alternatives. Just be sure you’re not going from one awful company to another when you choose one. Self hosting is great but it’s not for everyone.
It’s not as bad as you think it is. You probably overestimate the number of accounts you actually use regularly.
There are email alternatives, you don’t need to “host” your own servers or anything a physical backup works just as well. The only place that is difficult would the app store if you have an android. Some apps just require a play account to function
Reminds me of learned helplessness. Is switching email a one day and youre done type of thing. No. But pretty fast, you can get quite far, and the rest comes along as you go. If you want convenience, tey proton mail. They even have a smart switch feature. It’s its own ecosystem, the difference is you acually pay the company, instead of letting them scrape and harvest all your data to sell
I’ve been using this for a while and so far so good. They are Europe, Switzerland, based and while their user protection laws is not perfect, is way better than anything US hosted.
https://www.infomaniak.com/en/ksuite/myksuite