News Outlet blames Photoshop for making Australian lawmaker's photo more revealing
A lawmaker in the Australian state of Victoria went to watch the nightly news Monday, expecting to see himself as a prominent opponent of duck hunting.
But the MP, Georgie Purcell, noted that in one photo used by 9News, the tattoos on her midriff were missing.
“I saw the image on the screen and thought, 'That's really strange,' because my stomach is heavily tattooed,” Ms Purcell said on Wednesday.
She compared the image to the original photo, which was taken by a local newspaper last year, and realized that not only had her tattoos been removed, but her dress had been changed to a crop top and skirt. “They gave me chiseled abs and a boob job,” she said. “It really made me feel very uncomfortable.”
After Ms Purcell pointed out the changes on social media site X, female lawmakers and journalists branded the editorial as sexist and objectifying.
The news channel, 9News, apologized to Ms. Purcell. In a statement, it called the changes a “graphics error” and blamed it on a Photoshop automation tool.
The outlet's graphics department used an online photo of Ms. Purcell for a story, a said rack from Hugh Nailon, the outlet's news director for Melbourne, which is located in Victoria. By resizing the photo to the news package's specifications, “Photoshop automation created an image that was inconsistent with the original,” the statement said.
Ms Purcell questioned the suggestion that there was no human element to the situation. A representative from Adobe, which owns Photoshop, said edits to the image “required human intervention and approval.”
Nine, the company that owns 9News, did not respond to emailed requests for clarification. The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper, which is also owned by Nine, reported that the company said it “confirmed that there was human intervention in the decision to use the image.”
Some commentators familiar with working with Photoshop have suggested that if artificial intelligence is to blame, the changes could have been made using a Photoshop tool that fills the empty space above or below an image with an automatically generated continuation of the image. Others, such as Rob Nicholls, a professor at the University of Technology Sydney, said the changes could have been made with an auto-enhancement feature, similar to selfie filters that alter a person's facial features.
The broadcast of the image, apparently without anyone checking whether it was an accurate representation of Ms Purcell, shows that “the use of AI without strong editorial controls risks making very significant errors,” he said .
The incident shows that AI can replicate existing biases, he added. “I don't think it's a coincidence that these issues are often gender-related. ”
Ms Purcell said she believed similar edits of images of other female lawmakers should not have been broadcast, but that this was the case in her case because of her background. “I'm young, I'm blonde, I'm covered in tattoos, I have a history of sex work,” she said. “If nothing else, it has started a very important conversation about the mistreatment of women in public life.”