Meta suggests AI Northern Lights pics are as good as the real thing

Meta has a suggestion for folks like me who forgot to go outside and look at the Northern Lights on Thursday night: just use AI to fake it! But Threads users who replied to Meta’s idea, posted along with three AI-generated images of the Aurora Borealis Meta last night, seem to disagree.

The images show the Northern Lights hovering over the Golden Gate Bridge, over a city skyline, and over a ferris wheel. It’s clearly meant to latch onto a trending moment of people posting their own pictures of the Northern Lights from the amazing and rare display of the lights, which plunged deep into the United States on Thursday night.

Once you get past the first few comments from people sharing their own AI-generated Northern Lights pictures, the replies range from thoughtfully critical:

One person who says they’re an “astronaut/particle physicist and AI scientist” had particularly detailed feedback:

Others shared pictures they say they took of the phenomenon:

Like the Olympics ad Google pulled, Meta’s social media team has failed to read the room. Users’ posts aren’t just showing off a pretty picture (though that’s certainly part of it!). They’re also about participating in a collective celebration of a rare, shared lived experience. It’s not the time or place to insert an AI-generated image.

Society is still sorting out messy questions about AI, like what it’s doing to photography and the ethics of training it on the internet’s collected works of artists, writers, musicians, and photographers. Until the dust settles from such debates, posts like Meta’s will continue to miss the mark.