←back to thread

Trains cancelled over fake bridge collapse image

(www.bbc.com)
263 points josephcsible | 4 comments | 07 Dec 25 00:37 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
Show context
defrost ◴[07 Dec 25 01:09 UTC] No.46178298[source]▶
It's a bit of a non story, even with the fake image.

From the article:

  Trains were halted after a suspected AI-generated picture that seemed to show major damage to a bridge appeared on social media following an earthquake.
...

  Railway expert Tony Miles said due to the timing of the incident, very few passengers will have been impacted by the hoax as the services passing through at that time were primarily freight and sleeper trains.

  "They generally go slow so as not to disturb the passengers trying to sleep - this means they have a bit of leeway to go faster and make up time if they encounter a delay," he said.

  "It's more the fact that Network Rail will have had to mobilise a team to go and check the bridge which could impact their work for days."
Standard responsible rail maintainance is to investigate rail integrity following heavy rains, earthquakes, etc.

A fake image of a stone bridge with fallen parapets prompts the same response as a phone call about a fallen stone from a bridge or (ideally !!) just the earthquake itself - send out a hi-railer for a track inspection.

The larger story here (be it the UK, the US, or AU) is track inspections .. manned or unmanned?

Currently on HN: Railroads will be allowed to reduce inspections and rely more on technology (US) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46177550

https://apnews.com/article/automated-railroad-track-inspecti...

on the decision to veer toward unmanned inspections that rely upon lidar, gauge measures, crack vibration sensing etc.

Personally I veer toward manned patrols with state of the art instrumentation - for the rail I'm familiar with there are things that can happen with ballast that are best picked up by a human, for now.

replies(3): >>46178367 #>>46178593 #>>46178616 #
1. tiew9Vii ◴[07 Dec 25 02:19 UTC] No.46178616[source]▶
Regardless of how many people it disrupted or not, it’s not a non story.

It’s highlighted a weakness. It’s easy to disrupt national infrastructure by generating realistic hoax photos/videos with very little effort from anywhere in the world.

replies(1): >>46178724 #
2. defrost ◴[07 Dec 25 02:49 UTC] No.46178724[source]▶
It's not a new story, nor has it highlighted a new weakness - people have had the ability to claim tracks are covered in stone or by a dead cow for a good many years now.

Tracks have cameras to rapidly discount big claims, in this specific case there was an actual earthquake which should (and likely did, the story doesn't drill down very deep) have triggered a manual track inspection for blockages and ballast shifts in of itself.

replies(1): >>46179680 #
3. silversmith ◴[07 Dec 25 06:40 UTC] No.46179680[source]▶
If I do a prank call, it's easy to see the intent to disrupt.

If I post AI generated images to twitter, and those get amplified by my followers (that might or might not be real people) enough to surface on some rail engineers feed, well, that's just me showcasing my art, no harm intended, right?

replies(1): >>46179933 #
4. defrost ◴[07 Dec 25 07:33 UTC] No.46179933{3}[source]▶
If I if enough hypothetical if's that's just a giant empty if, right?

It'd be useful if commenters view this from the pragmatic real world track maintainance PoV.

Verifiable calls from the public about blocked lines made to official numbers with traceback etc. carry more weight than social media buzz.

In urban rail the bulk of AI generated images can be discounted via camera feeds and sensors (eg: there's no indication of a line break so that image is BS).

There are already procedures to sift prank calls from things that need checking, to catch serial offenders and numbnuts that push bricks from overpasses.

In the specific instance of you hypothetically "just me showcasing my art, no harm intended" .. in a UK jurisdiction that would fall to the estimation of the opinion held by a man on the Clapham omnibus as channeled by a world weary judge with an arse sore from decades of having such stories paraded before them by indolent smirking cocksures.

YMMV.