25 February 2024

CRINGE CONNOISSEUR: Internet Culture Pops Over A "Well-Endowed" Mouse Meme

A social media user brought attention to wildly bizarre images found in a recent volume of the peer-reviewed Frontiers Journal (an academic journal that covers the latest research for academics and professional practitioners), and it looks like using Midjourney to create whatever gibberish it comes up with is good enough to get your paper published in an academic publication.

Ridiculous AI-Generated Image Of 'Well-Endowed' Mouse Gets Past Peer Review Into A Science Journal

February 15th, 2024 - 12:46 PM EST by Philipp Kachalin

 1 comment  Contact Newsroom

Ridiculous AI Image Of An Endowed Mouse Makes Its Way Into A Science Journal  | Know Your Meme

Earlier today, virologist Dr. Charlotte Houldcroft posted a bizarre illustration of a mouse with a giant sack that sort of looks like a diagram one would find in a scientific publication — except it was labeled with nonsense and had every other telltale sign of being AI-generated.

Perhaps making things worse, the image was indeed pulled from a scientific paper on cellular functions of spermatogonial stem cells, published by a group of Chinese researchers in the peer-reviewed Frontiers Journal.

ai-generated mouse in a scientific journal
X / Twitter / by @DrCJ_Houldcroft

Your eyes do not deceive you: What you see is indeed a mouse with a giant sack and a phallus-looking stem coming right out of it. Asking a furry R34 artist to draw a science diagram would probably result in something like this.

The authors of the article do not hide the fact that the images are indeed AI-generated, as there's even a disclaimer that images in the article were generated by Midjourney.

The real problem is that neither this image nor the two other diagrams included in the paper make any sense, let alone help understand the material.

ai-generated diagrams from a scientific article
X / Twitter / by @doctorveera

Now, people on social media are asking an obvious question, "How did the paper with AI-generated illustrations make its way past peer review?"

Frontiers Journal is yet to respond, and in the meantime, there's an AI-made mouse with a BMC to post memes about.

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"The editors at the journal Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology have retracted a paper after it was pointed out to them by readers that supporting images had been generated improperly by an AI image generator. In their retraction, the editors report that the reason for the retraction was that "concerns were raised regarding the nature of its AI-generated figures."
  • In the article, which involved research surrounding  in , the authors included images depicting rat anatomy that an AI system had clearly created. 
  • In one picture, a single rat appeared to have a penis and testicles that were larger than the rest of its body—not something that occurs in nature. Some of the accompanying text was also incomprehensible. Another image showed a rat cell that did not resemble the true structure of a rat cell.
The disproportioned images in the paper are likely to add to ongoing discussions in the science community surrounding the use of AI in generating text or imagery for use in technical papers—particularly those published in established journals.
  • In this case, it is not clear how such problematic images wound up in a peer-reviewed journal. The authors, a combined team from Hong Hui Hospital and Jiaotong University in China, did not try to hide the fact that they had used AI to create the ; they even credited Midjourney.
Some in the press have noted that Frontiers has a policy that allows for the use of AI-generated materials as long as their use is disclosed, which was the case in this instance
  • But the policy also notes that attempts must be made to fact-check anything produced by such systems, which clearly was not the case in this mix-up.
AI-generated disproportioned rat genitalia makes its way into peer-reviewed  journal
Scientific Journal Publishes AI-Generated Rat with Gigantic Penis In  Worrying Incident
AI-Generated Rat Balls Pass Frontiers Journal Peer Review | AI-Generated  Rat Balls Pass Peer Review | Know Your Meme
Scientists aghast at bizarre AI rat with huge genitals in peer-reviewed  article | Ars Technica

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