Communications of the ACM
All Science Journals Will Now Do An AI-Powered Check for Image Fraud
Image recycling is remarkably common and perhaps the most frustrating form of research fraud.
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The research publisher Science announced that all of its journals will begin using commercial software that automates the process of detecting improperly manipulated images. The move comes years into an awareness that the transition to digital data and publishing has made it easy to commit research fraud by altering images.
Science is turning to a service called Proofig to make it easier to spot problems.
The editorial that Science is using to announce its new policy and the Proofig website refer to its service as being powered by AI. One step that clearly uses AI is the identification of images within the PDF of a research manuscript. Once a user confirms that the objects the system has identified correspond to the paper's figures, the software scans them all for overlapping features, even in cases of cropping and rotation.
Proofig's system tabulates the number of features shared by different images and provides a graphical view that draws lines connecting these features.
While the move is a significant first step, the software has limitations. While it will catch some of the most egregious cases of image manipulation, enterprising fraudsters can easily avoid being caught if they know how the software operates.
From Ars Technica
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