It was April 1, so, of course, the state of Florida played the fool | Opinion

It sounded oh-so-Florida.

The story said: “A high school principal in Jacksonville, Florida, has banned his teachers from showing an Early Renaissance painting of the Madonna and Child, claiming the Virgin Mary ‘doesn’t look happy enough’ about experiencing the joy of motherhood. Governor Ron DeSantis quickly voiced his support for the principal, adding that Mary Magdalene ‘looks like a hooker.’ ”

Florida’s very verbal governor recently landed a velvet-gloved punch on former President Trump — “I don’t know what goes into paying hush money to a porn star to secure silence over some type of alleged affair. I just I can’t speak to that.” — but DeSantis using “Mary Magdalene” and “hooker” in the same sentence? Hmmm . . .

Then, later on in Hyperallergic’s story:

“In a series of tweets, Governor DeSantis applauded the decision to ban the artwork. He specifically took issue with the artist’s representation of Mary Magdalene, who can be seen in the background to the right of St. John the Baptist, admitting that although he has not personally read the Bible, the way the figure is looking out at the viewer is ‘inappropriate.’ ”

Nope, nope and nope.

It was April 1, and the website, which publishes authoritative stories on arts and culture, ’fessed up later, after it had been posted: “Update: April Fool’s.”

But this “story” came on the heels of a another story — a real one: The school principal of Tallahassee Classical School, a charter school, was forced to resign when one of the teachers showed her sixth-grade art class an image of Michelangelo’s David statue, with full genitalia. A parent complained that it was inappropriate. And a story that went viral around the world was launched.

Ah, Florida.

But here’s where joke news, fake news — and especially fake images — cease to be funny.

Before Trump was arrested behind closed doors on April 4 — but after the New York prosecutor’s office announced the indictment — Twitter was flooded with images of the former president, resisting arrest and pulling away from a throng of policemen trying to tackling him.

Didn’t happen, obviously. But it sure looked real to anyone caught off guard, outraged at his supposed treatment or giddy with smug delight.

A few days after that, one Twitter photo showed President Biden doing a fist-pumping happy dance at the White House after the Trump indictment was announced. Another showed the president and Vice President Kamala Harris in an ecstatic embrace.

The White House said neither of those things happened: “They are inauthentic,” said Andrew Bates, deputy press secretary, in an email on April 3.

According to pbs.org: “Twitter has a policy banning ‘synthetic, manipulated, or out-of-context media’ with the potential to deceive or harm.” Apparently, it was noted in some of the Trump images that they were generated by artificial intelligence, or AI — but that implies not all of them were. Meta, Facebook and Instagram’s parent company, declined to comment, according to pbs.org.

This is all scary — and we’re just getting started. AI and social media are going to make the 2024 presidential election like no other, ever. What we saw on Twitter was disinformation. Media that care deeply about facts should be gearing up to debunk what’s flying around the social universe and should take precautions to not be taken in. By April 3, Snopes, a fact-checking website, had identified the Hyperallergic story as “satire.”

And Americans, too, must be vigilant, more questioning — especially before hitting “retweet” or sharing. That’s going to be hard. AI-generated images look amazingly real, are timely and in sharp focus. Experts are suggesting, ironically, using AI-generated programs to detect AI-generated fake photos.Siwei Lyu, the director of the Media Forensic Lab at the University of Buffalo, told AFP that in the fake embrace: “Note that Harris’ hand has six fingers.”

The problem is, who was counting?