Police apologize after using AI-altered photo to boast about Maine drug bust

A police department in Maine shared a photo edited with artificial intelligence as it boasted about a recent drug bust.

The Westbrook Police Department has since apologized, saying in a July 1 post on Facebook that edits made on the original photo through “a Photoshop app” were not caught before it was shared online.

Police later revealed to WGME that it was ChatGPT, not Photoshop, that was used to revise the photo.

“When we look and compare the two photos, it’s really bizarre as to what that app did to the photo,” Westbrook Police Capt. Steven Goldberg told the news outlet. “As you mentioned, it got rid of those cookie cutter packaging, it completely redid the lettering of some of the packages and it seemed to alter some of the things we took pictures of. I know we mentioned the spoon and the case, and we don’t have a good explanation why.”

The original post was deleted, but police provided the original photo and the edited one in its follow-up. It said the photo was edited with AI, not generated.

The department said it did not realize parts of the image had been changed until members of the community brought up their concerns.

“Clearly, we should have looked further into the shared image,” police said in its Facebook post. “We consider this a valuable lesson learned. This image distracted from the message we wanted to share, which is that dangerous drugs have been removed from our community.”

But before realizing its photo had been altered, police doubled down and “set the record straight.” The “gibberish” text shown in the AI-edited photo was real, the department initially said.

“That is legitimately what was located and seized by officers,” police said. “The packaging is most likely foreign, and it is possible that whoever made that packaging used AI to make a clearly knock-off package.”

The department’s follow-up post has received hundreds of comments, many of which criticize its use of AI.

Others say they were “gaslit” by the department’s second post, which was also deleted.

“Doubling down on the clearly altered pictures and promising you didn’t use any AI before posting this new update was an interesting choice,” one commenter said.

“The dangerous part isn’t that you used AI to alter an image. It’s that you denied using AI at all on the photo,” another commenter said. “You told a bold faced lie to the public that you are sworn to serve.”

“This incident should be used as a primary source example for the responsible and accountable use of technology (particularly AI) by police departments in public facing spaces,” one man said. “You can see many items were altered, neglected, or added to the edited photo. The issue is not AI or Photoshop, it’s the lack of a careful review of content being published on the profile.”

Six people were charged in the drug bust, WMTW reported, as authorities seized 61 grams of fentanyl and 23 grams of methamphetamine.

Westbrook is a western suburb of Portland, the most populous city in Maine.