SEOUL (AFP): South Korean police said on Friday they had arrested a man for distributing an AI-generated image of a wolf that escaped from a zoo this month, triggering a frantic search.
The two-year-old male wolf named Neukgu dug out of his enclosure in the central city of Daejeon on April 8 and was on the run for nine days before being recaptured.
The city government and major media outlets shared an image that had spread widely online purporting to show a light-brown wolf trotting through an intersection after its escape.
The image was fake and had been created using artificial intelligence, subsequent analysis showed.
The Daejeon Metropolitan police told AFP they had arrested a man in his 40s on Thursday on charges of obstructing official duties by deception, specifically for "distributing fabricated wolf sighting images created using generative AI".
They said the man admitted to the charges during questioning, saying he did it "just for fun".
"A single AI-manipulated image delayed the capture of the wolf by as many as nine days," police said.
"The prolonged deployment of police and fire personnel caused significant disruption to their primary duty of protecting the public."
Neukgu's escape prompted a local elementary school to close over safety concerns, and the local government sent hundreds of firefighters, police officers and troops in a bid to get him back.
Authorities also deployed drones and thermal cameras to track down the 30-kilogram (66-pound) runaway, who kept slipping through the net despite several sightings.
He was finally recaptured on April 17 after authorities received a tip about a sighting in a park.
An AFP analysis later confirmed that the AI-generated image was inauthentic. AFP had initially redistributed the image and later withdrew it. -- AFP
