The Kolkata Municipal Corporation’s social media posts of various places in the city that have been cleaned up, have sparked allegations that the civic body is passing off AI-generated images as actual work done.
The cleanliness drive that the KMC has undertaken is called Swachhta Se Swagat. But, soon after its implementation, a number of social media users pointed out that the ‘after’ photos posted by the KMC were AI-generated.
The eagle-eyed cyber sleuths spotted the AI watermark in a photo of a water body near Pulin Khatick Road, in Tangra, and different pin-codes — from Kalighat to Chetla in south Kolkata — in geo-tagged photos of ghats.
After the controversy snowballed online, the KMC responded on social media on June 20. It deleted the photograph of the pond near 35 Pulin Khatick Road and posted a new photo of the cleaned water body.
“We sincerely apologise for the inadvertent digital error from our end. The waterbody in question was duly cleared. We thank the citizens of Kolkata for helping us serve you better,” the caption read.
The civic body did not give any explanation about why AI-generated images were used to showcase the cleanliness drive, nor did they respond to calls from The Telegraph Online on this subject.
While KMC has posted many photos where there have been no claims of foul play, four places stuck out as AI-generated due to watermarked photos and the geo-tags.
The Telegraph Online visited four of these places to find out whether they had actually been cleaned.
This is what we found…
Chittaranjan Hospital, Rameshwar Shaw Road
KMC posted the above photo on June 20. The social media post from KMC claimed they cleaned up the road. The KMC page posted a before-and-after picture showing that the hospital wall had been cleaned, but the garbage and daily waste still lay strewn as found on June 23, as photographed below.
Adi Ganga near Sahid Khudiram Metro station
KMC posted the above photo on June 16. When we visited on June 23, work was still in progress, with (below) workers in boats cleaning up the tributary.
Water body near 35 Pulin Khatick Road
KMC had posted the above photo as a ‘cleaned’ waterbody on June 17, in a now-deleted post. But keen-eyed social media users noticed an AI-generated watermark on the ‘after’ image.
KMC said, “We sincerely apologise for the inadvertent digital error from our end. The waterbody in question was duly cleared.” When we visited on June 23, the water body (below) was indeed cleaned.
Babar Ghat, Kalighat
In the picture posted by KMC (above) on June 16, the ghat was shown to be cleaned. But the geotagged address did not match. The ‘cleaned’ photo showed a Kolkata 700027 pin code, while the ghat is actually in the 700026 code, approximately six kilometres away. But, when we visited on June 23, the ghat (below) was comparatively clean.
