News report · A photo, more than 3,000 forwards and a Year 8 class with a magnifying glass.
TORREALBA. On Thursday night a photo began to circulate in the village’s WhatsApp groups: a wolf, at night, next to the fountain in the main square, under the bakery sign. “Tonight, in Torrealba. Keep an eye on the children,” said the message. In less than a day it had been forwarded more than 3,000 times.
On Friday morning, the town hall received dozens of calls from worried residents. That same day, Begoña Arrieta, who teaches Spanish language and literature at the secondary school, swapped the lesson she had planned for a fact-checking exercise with her Year 8 students.
The first thing they did was ask an AI chatbot whether the photo was real. It replied that it was “authentic, with 95% probability”. “That’s where we learnt the first lesson,” explains Lucas, one of the students. “A tool can answer you very confidently and still be wrong. What it says isn’t proof: you have to check it.”
So they went down to the square with the photo on a phone. The real fountain has three spouts; the one in the photo has four. The bakery sign says “BAKERY”; the one in the photo says “BAKRY”, with slightly crooked letters. According to the teacher, warped text and details that don’t add up are common in images created with artificial intelligence. What’s more, the account that first posted the photo had been created the day before and had no other posts.
Asked by this newspaper, the biologist Íñigo Salcedo points out that in some areas wolves may come close to villages, especially in winter, “although it’s rare and they almost never get as far as a square”. No resident has seen the animal or found any tracks.
On Friday afternoon, the town hall published a notice: the photo was not taken in Torrealba. Class 8B, for its part, has made a poster with four questions to ask yourself before forwarding anything: Who posted it first? Do the details add up? Does any reliable source report it? And what if it isn’t true?
Activities
1 Detective Inference
What conclusion did the students get right? Tick the correct hypothesis.
- a) The photo was real, because an AI chatbot said it was authentic with 95% probability.
- b) The photo was real, because more than 3,000 people forwarded it and nobody in the village denied it all day.
- c) The photo wasn’t taken in Torrealba’s square: it has details that don’t match the real square.
- d) The photo was fake because wolves never come close to villages, let alone into a square.
What is it based on? Copy or summarise the clue from the text that proves it.
2 The Loom Order of events
Put the events in time order. Write the order number (1, 2, 3…) in each box.
- The photo begins to circulate on WhatsApp.
- The students ask a chatbot whether the photo is real.
- The account that will post the photo is created.
- The students compare the photo with the real square.
- The town hall publishes a notice about the photo.
3 The Missing Page Coherence
A few days later, a follow-up story is published. Which one fits the report? Tick only one option.
- a) The school hangs 8B’s poster at the entrance, with the four questions worth asking before forwarding a story or a photo.
- b) A resident produces the tracks the wolf left by the fountain, and the town hall withdraws the notice it published on Friday afternoon.
- c) The chatbot the students consulted explains that the photo was actually taken at night in Torrealba’s main square.
- d) Begoña Arrieta, the teacher, advises her students to trust what a chatbot says, because it’s quicker than going to check.
Why do you rule out the others? Explain one of them.
4 Spot the Contradiction Literal reading
Three statements don’t fit the report. Put an X next to the 3 statements that don’t fit the text.
- a) The photo began to circulate on a Thursday night.
- b) The fountain in the real square has four spouts.
- c) The chatbot said the photo was authentic.
- d) Several residents found wolf tracks in the square.
- e) The account that posted the photo had been created the day before.
- f) The teacher who set the exercise taught Maths.
5 The Gallery Visualisation
In the game you choose the illustration that answers this question: “Which is the photo that circulated on WhatsApp?”. Here, you draw it yourself, with every detail the text gives you.