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screenshot of the Threads post

HSC students sitting their English exam today think that one of the stimuli provided, listed as a "photograph", is an AI-generated image.

The image appears to trace back to a SEO guy's blog and has weird distortions and artifacts consistent with AI but it's hard to say for sure.
camwilsonreporter, Threads, 15 Oct 2024. (photo of test paper from the original post; link to HSC not in original)

The same claim was made on Reddit by u/RevolutionaryIce8864 (1.3k+ score):

hello, as a year 12 student who just did the first english exam, i was genuinely baffled seeing one of the stimulus texts u have to analyse is an AI IMAGE. my friend found the image of it online, but that’s what it looked like

for a subject which tells u to “analyse the deeper meaning”, “analyse the composer’s intent”, “appreciate aesthetic and intellectual value” having an AI image in which you physically can’t analyse anything deeper than what it suggests, it’s just extremely ironic 😭 idk, as an artist using AI images, i might have a different take on this since i’m an artist, what r ur thoughts?

Looking closely at the image, you can see the keyboard and cables are unrealistic, so it wouldn't be an actual photograph. The image appears in an article listed as "Written by Florian Schroeder" from July 2023. At the same time, it's quite suspicious that there is a photo online of a HSC exam.

Question: Were students asked to analyze this AI-generated image on a year-12 HSC English exam in New South Wales, Australia?

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  • Looking at the clearer linked image, if it was created by AI, wouldn't the coffee be level in the slightly tilted cup? It's not, and also slightly lower on the 'wrong side', suggesting that a hand held camera is slightly tilted (as is the opposite shore). Most photos I take are tilted by about 1°.
    – Weather Vane
    Commented Oct 15 at 13:43
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    @WeatherVane The AI is just basing the image off actual pictures, so if most of it's training included a tilt, so should an AI replication of a camera picture. Look at details like th cup handle or wires that seem to turn into bench colour and then almost disappear or shadows that dont match cables.
    – JMac
    Commented Oct 15 at 14:25
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    @Believeitornot... says "so it's not totally meaningless to speak of a "composer's intent"" — yes, but that isn't what this question is about. That the image is AI generated isn't in doubt; the question is did this question really appear on an exam?.
    – Ray Butterworth
    Commented Oct 15 at 14:25
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    Yeah, I just want to fact-check the claim ("is it true?" not "is it appropriate?"). I wanted to emphasize that it's not just a decoration, and the students are meant to write about it, so I use the word "analyze". Feel free to edit if you can think of a better way to phrase it; sometimes it can be tricky to get the question phrasing accurate here.
    – Rebecca J. Stones
    Commented Oct 15 at 22:36
  • 5
    I would argue that critically analysing AI-generated content should be a very important skill for students to acquire.
    – gerrit
    Commented Oct 16 at 11:30

3 Answers 3

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It’s widely reported but there is no official word Yes

It has been reported in the Guardian, News.com, Crikey.com, the Daily Telegraph and several AI focused sites that students believe the image is AI generated and it’s origin has been traced to here (archive).

NSW Education has confirmed the source but not whether it was AI generated (or if it was used with permission).

The blog post belongs to Florian Schroeder, about whom the Guardian says:

Online, Schroeder – who shares his name with a famous German television personality – describes himself as “passionate about AI”, having “integrated it firmly into his daily work”. He is the co-founder for data and AI magazine AI Rockstars.

So:

  • Was the picture in the exam? Yes.
  • Did some students think it was AI generated? Yes.
  • Is it AI generated? Probably - it looks a bit weird and it’s from a person who says the are passionate about AI and have integrated it into their daily work. The creator has subsequently confirmed that it is AI generated.
  • Has there been official confirmation one way or the other? Yes.

Following the publication’s confirmation, NESA said, “We want to reassure students that they were asked to respond to the question using the image, not the origin of the image, nor its construction. They will be marked on how they responded to the question.”

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    Do you have a reference for the edit: "The creator has subsequently confirmed that it is AI generated."?
    – Oddthinking ♦
    Commented Oct 21 at 0:50
  • @Oddthinking reported in the Melbourne Age and the Sydney Morning Herald
    – Dale M
    Commented Oct 21 at 1:03
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    @DaleM says "reported in …" — Comments are ephemeral; they go away without warning. The answer itself should contain links and quotations from these newspapers.
    – Ray Butterworth
    Commented Oct 21 at 2:09
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This article from the Sydney Morning Herald seems to confirm, although it does not contain a picture of the question.

Her classmate Ally Xie, 18, said this year’s English paper was different in that the hardest question (worth five marks) in the first short-answer section came at the middle of the exam – not at the end. That asked students to consider a piece of writing about a farm and compare it to a photo of an old MacBook placed on a table next to a river.

“All my friends were like: ‘That’s artificial intelligence’,” Ally said.

‘A strange question’: HSC students quizzed about smell in English exam

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Further to Ross Ogilvie's answer, the SMH has now confirmed that the image was indeed AI generated. According to the article, it was created by Florian Schroeder, and published on medium.com. He used ChatGPT and Dall-E2.

The exam question was not about AI, but rather about the responses to different stimuli, in this case, the image and some text.

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