Nine News Melbourne broadcast a digitally altered image of Victorian MP Georgie Purcell that enlarged her breasts and exposed her midriff, which the network blamed on Adobe Photoshop's generative AI tool, though Adobe disputed this explanation.
In January 2024, Nine News Melbourne broadcast an altered image of Victorian Animal Justice Party MP Georgie Purcell during a news segment about duck hunting. The original image showed Purcell wearing a white dress, but the broadcast version had been digitally modified to show her in a crop top and skirt with enlarged breasts and exposed midriff, removing her stomach tattoos. Purcell noticed the alterations and posted a comparison on social media, criticizing the sexualized editing. Nine News director Hugh Nailon apologized and claimed the changes resulted from 'automation by Photoshop' when their graphics department resized the image using Adobe's Generative Expand AI tool. However, Adobe contradicted this explanation, stating that 'any changes to this image would have required human intervention and approval.' The incident attracted international media attention and sparked debate about AI bias in image generation, particularly regarding the sexualization of women. Multiple experts and politicians criticized the incident as an example of sexism in media representation of female politicians.
Domain classification, causal taxonomy, severity scores, and national security assessments were LLM-classified and may contain errors.
Unequal treatment of individuals or groups by AI, often based on race, gender, or other sensitive characteristics, resulting in unfair outcomes and unfair representation of those groups.
AI system
Due to a decision or action made by an AI system
Unintentional
Due to an unexpected outcome from pursuing a goal
Post-deployment
Occurring after the AI model has been trained and deployed