Tran Thi Thanh Nhan, a 38-year-old resident of Nui Cam Commune in An Giang Province, was fined VND7.5 million (US$290) for “sharing false or misleading information,” the commune authorities announced Friday.
About two weeks earlier, Nhan had informed authorities that an approximately 80kg crocodile had been spotted in Vinh Tre Canal and submitted several images as evidence.
The AI-generated image shows a crocodile in a canal in An Giang Province’s Nui Cam Commune. Photo by police
In response, local officials issued public warnings advising residents to exercise caution when traveling, fishing, or spending time near the canal, and deployed personnel to investigate. No signs of a crocodile were found.
However, Nhan’s 17-year-old daughter then came to the police, claiming the images are not real and that she had generated them using AI. She then shared the images in a family chat group on Zalo, a popular messaging and video-calling app in Vietnam.
Authorities later determined that the daughter had fabricated the story.
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Communications, September 22, 2021
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