It’s increasingly difficult to keep track of all the generative AI slop currently fooling unsuspecting internetgoers on any given day. Earlier this month, a (fake) image went viral after enough people genuinely believed North Carolina conservationists kept wild horses warm during winter storms by wrapping them in fiberglass insulation. Now, another hoax is tugging on the heartstrings of animal lovers. Multiple AI slop farm accounts are claiming that Hungary built heated aboveground walkways to accommodate the nation’s stray dogs amid freezing temperatures.
“Saw this [Facebook] post about Hungary creating tunnels that keep dogs warm during the winter. Is this AI?” one user recently posted to the appropriately titled r/isthisAI subreddit along with one of the multiple similar images floating around the web.
The photo seems plausible enough at first glance. A dozen-or-so dogs are seen making their way through a glass-enclosed, well-lit corridor that zigzags through a snowy neighborhood alleyway at dusk. But after a closer examination—along with a moment’s worth of critical thinking skills—to start questioning what you’re seeing. The image quality itself is pretty low-resolution, for starters. This isn’t a giveaway by itself, but murkiness remains a trademark of AI generated visuals, particularly those intentionally designed to fool their audiences. Other hints that the image is not real are a bit more technical, such as inconsistencies in lighting, shading, and shadows.
Then there are the pooches. Not only do the dogs appear remarkably well-groomed for a bunch of strays, but many of them appear to be wearing collars. This alone is a pretty huge error, and speaks to one of generative AI’s (many) fatal flaws. As flashy as its best outputs may be, the technology is still pretty terrible at anything other than modest renderings. You can ask it to create an image of stray dogs, but if its dataset it is using to generate the image includes a lot of dogs with collars, then you’ll still likely receive collared canines in the final product.
On top of everything else, there are simply too many logical loopholes to the entire tunnel setup.
“Why would it be a zig-zag tunnel? Down the middle of an open park space, taking up as much usable space as possible, etc. Also where are the dogs going?” wrote one Reddit commenter, who also included their own quick Google image search revealing a lengthy result page full of similarly absurd photos.
Finally—and arguably most importantly—not a single online news publication (Hungarian or otherwise) has reported on any stray dog tunnel projects. The internet may be awash in AI slop designed to land on top of search engine results, but it’s still easy enough to vet a source. If nothing else, take this latest hoax as another reason to always critically engage with online content. Don’t let your understandable love of dogs cloud your judgment.
