Truth and AI in Minneapolis
When federal agents killed Alex Pretti in Minneapolis on Saturday morning, video of the shooting — from lots of people, and lots of angles, with wildly varying levels of quality — immediately began to fly around the internet. This is what always happens in times like these, and there have unfortunately been a lot of times like these recently.
There was something different about this one, though. Something about how visible the whole act was. Something about this one coming so soon after the last one. Whatever it was, the Alex Pretti killing seemed to spark a different reaction online. Meanwhile, the counternarrative seemed to move just as quickly, and AI imagery became so ubiquitous that it might have been hard to trust your view of such a heavily documented event. How is anyone supposed to make sense of any of it?
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