The Westbrook Police Department on Tuesday issued a statement responding to allegations that they had used an artificial intelligence (AI)-generated picture of evidence seized during a drug bust on Brackett Street last week.
[RELATED: Six Arrested in Westbrook Drug Bust…]
In an original post to their Facebook page regarding the drug raid on Monday, Westbrook Police shared a photo (see below) that included nonsense text on packages and other visual anomalies.
These anomalies in the photo led members of the public to speculate whether the image of the evidence was AI-generated, as nonsense text like that seen in the photo is typical in AI-generated images.
According to Westbrook Police, an officer involved in the arrests took the original photograph and put it through a “photoshop app” to insert the department’s patch to identify Westbrook Police as the arresting agency.
“The patch was added, and the photograph with the patch was sent to one of our Facebook administrators, who posted it. Unbeknownst to anyone, when the app added the patch, it altered the packaging and some of the other attributes on the photograph,” the department stated on Tuesday.
“None of us caught it or realized it,” they said.
“We apologize for this oversight. It was never our intent to alter the image of the evidence. We never realized that using a photoshop app to add our logo would alter a photograph so substantially,” they continued. “When initially alerted to the public concerns of the image, we assumed this was the case in this situation as well. Clearly, we should have looked further into the shared image.”
The Maine Wire did not run the altered photo with its story last week as other media outlets appear to have done.
The image below is the unaltered version of the photograph of the evidence taken by the Westbrook Police officer. The text on the packaging in the photos is readable, as opposed to the gibberish text in the altered image.
“We consider this a valuable lesson learned. This image distracted from the message we wanted to share, which is that dangerous drugs have been removed from our community,” the department stated.
Westbrook Police also offered an invitation to the news media to come to the department to look at the original evidence in an effort to remain transparent.
