Texas woman starts AI awareness series after seeing fake photos of Kerrville floods shared online

AUSTIN (KXAN) -- A Texas woman started an AI awareness series on social media after she grew frustrated seeing misinformation about recent flooding being widely spread online.

Maria Joaquina is a digital strategist who grew up in Kerrville. She works with small businesses to develop online marketing strategies and help them appear in AI and Google searches.

"I've done a lot of work with AI and learning how it works," Joaquina said. "I've also created images for marketing through it. I have a lot of experience dealing with AI imagery and videos in that context."

Joaquina started an awareness campaign on her Facebook page to teach people how to spot AI-generated images. It's a three-part series of posts that share tips on what to look for. She said she's planning to create a series focused on how to spot AI-generated videos next.

"I want to make it as simple as possible for people who don't regularly use AI or are subjected to what those images look like, you know, the occasional social media user, or like my grandma, you know, people who just aren't aware that that is going on out there," Joaquina said.

Part 1 of the series is "How to Spot a FAKE Flood Photo," and Part 2 is "AI Fake Flood Image Scams." Part 3, which is "How to verify content before you share it," is yet to be posted, as of Thursday afternoon.

Joaquina said that there are different goals behind accounts sharing AI-generated photos: to go viral and build a "spamming account" to sell, or to get monetized and make money from clicks, shares, and views.

She said in some cases, people make up fake stories -- like being a flood victim when they aren't in reality -- and post donation links or nefarious links to sites that could potentially steal someone's information. Joaquina also mentioned posts with AI-generated photos that depict celebrities helping with flood relief efforts, noting that those types of posts can often bury real information that people need to see.

"People are sharing it, boosting that visibility and running down all the posts that should be up in front, you know, missing people, information that needs to be getting out there to the public about volunteering and times or locations that you should be at," Joaquina said. "There's information out there that is needed to get in front of people, and it can get lost whenever we deal with these types of viral content-type things."

Some tips Joaquina shared on how to recognize if something is AI-generated:

• Everything seems too perfect
• The shadowing/lighting seems off
• Repeated objects
• Too much symmetry
• Misspellings in text, or blurry or warped text

Joaquina also pointed out that when it comes to fake flood photos specifically, a lot of times the water looks too clean. "Flood waters are murky and they're dirty. There's nothing perfect about them," she said.

Joaquina is hoping to fill what she feels is a gap in education and awareness surrounding AI because AI "moves so fast," she said.

"I think AI is developing rapidly, and its abilities are also going so fast that it's hard to get any kind of literacy out there to people who don't deal with it. Because one week you have this information, and the next week it's already better, and the next week, they're already doing something [new]," Joaquina said.

She also said as a person who works with AI regularly, it's frustrating to her that there are bad actors who take advantage of it.

"This good tool that we can have to, you know, help us through whatever we need in our business, because it's awesome for small business owners when they learn how to properly use it and how to let it help them, but when people are using it to hurt other people, it's like... there needs to be some digital literacy that gets shared with those who don't deal with it and don't know what to look out for," she said.

Joaquina also wanted to encourage people who aren't very familiar with AI and said it's nothing to be ashamed of.

"Sometimes, we unknowingly engage with the content, and that's okay. We don't have to be embarrassed about the fact that we were fooled by AI. Everyone's fooled every once in a while," Joaquina said. "I think that it's just our responsibility to share responsibly and make sure that we are limiting the exposure that scammers get to real people and helping real people and real survivors get their information out there."

Joaquina has been working in digital strategy for about 10 years now, but the last five of those have been geared toward helping small business owners. She's also studying Business Entrepreneurship and Media Communications at Georgetown University.

Her biggest piece of advice: "Look before you share."

"Just kind of give it a little 10-second evaluation if you're going to share anything online that you think may be helpful," Joaquina said. "It's just getting harder and harder to tell, so we just got to be careful about what we share online."