AI image (mis)labelling
« previous post | next post »
The singularity may have arrived, but AI systems still can't label diagrams:
Of course there's lots more coverage.
According to the Guardian article,
A Reuters analysis found the image of the map included in the presentation contained an artificial intelligence watermark that signals it was made with OpenAI tools.
Similar examples have been around for a while. Some that we've covered:
"Chain of thought hallucination?", 8/9/2025
"More on GPT-5 pseudo-text in graphics", 8/24/2025
"More of GPT-5's absurd image labelling", 9/15/2025
Today's AI systems can produce impressive texts and impressive pictures, but somehow picture labelling still goes badly wrong.
NW said,
August 2, 2026 @ 3:32 pm
That was the first thing that went wrong. The second thing was that no-one checked. No-one who knew a map of Africa?
AntC said,
August 2, 2026 @ 4:37 pm
No-one who knew a map of Africa?
You might remember there's a whole Province in Africa called 'Gaza' that (apparently) no-one knew of. Or at least that the world's first ex-trillionaire didn't know of, despite growing up practically next door.
You don't need AI to fail at the geography of Africa.
Jonathan Smith said,
August 2, 2026 @ 4:43 pm
Well not "label diagrams" but rather "make diagrams (or anything) [reliably/accurately]" — none of the outlines are in the right places; one (fake) country's line leads nowhere (fake Cameroon one supposes?); even the color coding is hilariously off.
But we knew these people were fucking muppets. To be fair, by comparison, the AI at work *does* seem kinda super-intelligent…
Jason said,
August 2, 2026 @ 5:43 pm
AntC said.
"You might remember there's a whole Province in Africa called 'Gaza' that (apparently) no-one knew of."
This style of political smarminess is unworthy of a serious person. Egypt is in Africa; Gaza, sharing a border, is not. A Landlocked IVory Coast is obviously a bigger error than falling just on the wrong side of an arbitrary line.
AntC said,
August 2, 2026 @ 7:11 pm
@Jason, I'm referring to Gaza Province of Mozambique — which is not only in Africa, but nearly as far away from Egypt as you can get; and is named on the Department's map.
If you don't even remember the episode at a White House presser, I suggest you learn some political history along with your geography. People who live in glasshouses…
HS said,
August 2, 2026 @ 7:33 pm
The map is perfect, and accurately represents the Trump regime's knowledge of world geography (the AI system is much more intelligent and cunning than people realise and has foreseen this). And besides, official US maps will soon be redrawn to reflect these new country positions. And really, who cares? They're all shithole countries anyway.
JPL said,
August 2, 2026 @ 8:00 pm
The shapes labelled look like just random shapes in random places, having nothing to do with the shapes created by the geographical boundaries of any African nation. It's not labelling a map. Of course they had fired all the knowledgeable people, and wanted people without any common knowledge, let alone people with any relevant expertise, to replace them. This is because this government is not in fact, in general, in favor of helping people who are struggling and suffering and who they're nevertheless in a position to help. Why be serious about what is supposed to be your work? Trump and Miller and Hegseth demand callousness, because that's all they're capable of understanding. I'm not being unduly harsh. The unnecessary ending of Pepfar and other aid programs of USAID was a human travesty of the highest level, and things like this expose their efforts to restart some programs as half-hearted.
AntC said,
August 3, 2026 @ 12:43 am
The shapes labelled look like just random shapes in random places, having nothing to do with the shapes created by the geographical boundaries of any African nation.
I agree the shapes don't correlate to any political boundaries (current or historical AFAICT). OTOH they don't seem random, especially since the outline of Africa is pretty accurate.
If you squint very hard, you can see faint white lines amongst the grey areas (that also don't correlate to political boundaries). And more particularly, there's white blobs in the middle of several of the coloured areas. I suggest …
These are hydrological basins. The white blob in the middle of the shape labelled Uganda is Lake Victoria — so part of that shape does include Uganda. The white blob in the middle of the shape to its North-East is Lake Turkana. The long white streak through the shape labelled Cote d'Ivoire is Lake Malawi/Nyasa.
The green shape labelled Nigeria, which overlaps parts of Niger, but not Nigeria, corresponds roughly to the catchment of Lake Chad, which is endorheic (landlocked) and seasonal, so no permanent lakes (no white blob) — badly dried-out by climate change. The area to its South West with dangling line is roughly the catchment of the Volta — the white streak reaching nearly to the coast is Lake Volta, in Ghana.
The white blob in the middle of the Southernmost area, labelled Malawi is (at a guess) the Okavango (former) Delta/now Grassland roughly in Botswana.
This message prepared with no AI, but rather a dead-trees university atlas [**], cross-checked against wikipedia.
[**] Whose index (for the information of those more geographically challenged) includes both Gaza's. "serious person"s frequenting LLog would be alert to the dangers of soundalikes.
JPL said,
August 3, 2026 @ 1:57 am
So they took a map of drainage basins in Africa and attempted to label it, using "AI", for political entities that were not indicated on the map? What could go wrong? Even a mediocre student trying to cut corners on a high school research project wouldn't be satisfied with presenting that.
Olaf Zimmermann said,
August 3, 2026 @ 4:00 am
@JPL: Let's just call it the incontinental map.
Mark Liberman said,
August 3, 2026 @ 5:19 am
@JPL: "So they took a map of drainage basins in Africa and attempted to label it, using "AI", for political entities that were not indicated on the map? "
It was apparently the OpenAI program that selected the drainage-basin map to label. But as my earlier post illustrates, OpenAI is quite capable of producing absurd labels for an accurately-drawn map of political regions.
Terry K. said,
August 3, 2026 @ 4:41 pm
What I find interesting is that, if you go by color, it's actually got Cote d'Ivoire in the right spot; it's the lines that are messed up.
Julian said,
August 3, 2026 @ 6:37 pm
While surfing Substack I came upon a clip of a Canadian politician reading a speech in parliament in which, all in the same bored listless tone, he included a line or two of the prompt that his people had given the AI, which had accidentally made its way into the final script.
The poster commented: One advantage of AI is that it lets you know when someone is totally checked out.
Gobbledyglot said,
August 3, 2026 @ 9:05 pm
"Egypt is in Africa; Gaza, sharing a border, is not. A Landlocked Ivory Coast is obviously a bigger error than falling just on the wrong side of an arbitrary line."
Not sure about this arbitrary line idea, as national borders (disputed territory excepted) tend to be quite clearly defined – and often, enforced. Gaza is not of course "just on the wrong side" of the Asia/Africa line. That is almost 200 km away at the western edge of the Sinai peninsula, which itself is in Asia, not Africa.
HS said,
August 3, 2026 @ 11:06 pm
Gaza is not of course "just on the wrong side" of the Asia/Africa line. That is almost 200 km away at the western edge of the Sinai peninsula, which itself is in Asia, not Africa.
Well, maybe. But this actually depends on what you mean by a continent and what model of continents you use. Not everybody recognizes the same boundaries between continents, or even the same number of continents. I personally tend to regard the Arabian Peninsula (which I would usually though not always extend to include Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, Sinai, and part of south-east Turkey) as neither part of Asia nor part of Africa, but simply as "Arabia", and this actually make good sense from a geo-tectonic point of view, since Arabia is a separate tectonic plate. In fact, from a geo-tectonic point of view it actually makes good sense to regard Sinai, Israel, Palestine, and Lebanon as being part of Africa! If I was forced to choose to place my "Arabia" in either Asia or Africa I think on balance I would actually prefer to go against convention and regard it as being part of Africa – the southern edge of the mountain masses of Turkey and Iran seem to me to constitute a more natural boundary between Asia and Africa than the Red Sea, which you could almost regard as being an extension of the Great Rift Valley of East Africa which just happens to have been flooded by the sea.
Andreas Johansson said,
August 4, 2026 @ 4:50 am
WP's definition of the "Great Rift Valley" actually includes the Red Sea (and the Dead Sea and a series of depressions up to the Turkish border).
I'm not sure how standard this usage is – I'm more used to the idea that the northern end of the Great Rift Valley is in Afar and that the Red Sea is a separate albeit related rift – but it apparently it goes back all the way to the nineteenth century.
David Marjanović said,
August 4, 2026 @ 5:53 am
The valley may end in Afar, but it's all the same rift.
Terry K. said,
August 4, 2026 @ 7:30 pm
Did you all miss AntC explaining they meant the Gaza Province of Mozambique? AntC's referring to Elon Musk confusing the two, thinking a reference to the Gaza Province of Mozambique was a reference to the Gaza strip.
DCA said,
August 5, 2026 @ 1:07 pm
As a geophysicist, I'd say that the Gaza Strip is located "on the African Plate", but not "in Africa", which (in my mental image) stops at the Suez Canal extension of the Red Sea.