Credit: AI-generated image
The editors of the magazine Frontiers of cell biology and development retracted an article after readers pointed out to them that the supporting images were incorrectly generated by an AI image generator. In their retraction, the publishers report that the reason for the retraction was that “concerns were raised about the nature of the figures generated by the AI.”
In the paper, which involved research on stem cells in small mammals, the authors included images depicting rat anatomy that an AI system had clearly created. In one photo, a single rat appeared to have a penis and testicles larger than the rest of its body, which is not the case in nature. Some of the accompanying text was also incomprehensible. Another image showed a rat cell that did not resemble the true structure of a rat cell.
The disproportionate images in the article are likely to add to ongoing discussions within the scientific community around the use of AI to generate text or images for use in technical articles, particularly those published in established journals.
In this case, it is not clear how such problematic images ended up in a peer-reviewed journal. The authors, a combined team from Hong Hui Hospital and Jiaotong University in China, made no attempt to hide the fact that they used AI to create the images; they even credited Midjourney.
Some in the press have pointed out that Borders has a policy that allows the use of AI-generated materials provided their use is disclosed, which in this case it was. But the policy also notes that attempts should be made to verify anything produced by such systems, which clearly was not the case in this confusion.
The editors of Borders initially published a note in the newspaper claiming that the article had been corrected and that a new version would be published shortly. Shortly after, the document was retracted.
The errors made by the authors of the article and the journal team that approved its publication will likely be the first of many to come, although it remains unclear exactly what changes will be necessary to avoid that such errors do not occur again in the future. .
More information:
Retraction: Cellular functions of spermatogonial stem cells in relation to the JAK/STAT signaling pathway, Frontiers of cell biology and development (2024). DOI: 10.3389/fcell.2024.1386861
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