TOKYO - The Tokyo Branch of the Japanese Red Cross Society has been forced to cancel an exhibition of AI-generated content marking the 100th anniversary of the Great Kanto Earthquake following outrage online claiming the subject matter was "fake news."
The Red Cross used AI to create characters from figures in paintings from the Taisho Era (1912-1925) and planned to have these provide what it called "testimonies" of experiences from the massive earthquake that measured 7.9 on the Richter scale.
The earthquake, a firestorm, typhoon and massacres resulted in over 140,000 casualties, including at least 105,000 deaths.
The Great Kanto Earthquake is the severest natural disaster recorded in Japanese history.
The Japanese Red Cross Society has apologized over the exhibition originally intended to be held in the entrance lobby to its offices from August 25 to September 7.
"We have decided to suspend the implementation of this project as we determined explanation had been insufficient and that our original intention was not conveyed, leading to misunderstanding in some quarters and the message that what had intended to convey through could not be conveyed properly," the society said on a statement on its website. "We regret that more careful consideration was needed on this matter."
The Red Cross and other media reports have not specified any precise content from the exhibition that drew outrage. The massacre of Koreans in the aftermath of the earthquake has become a controversy in recent years with more people deny it, or the severity of the slaughter. Some estimates put the death toll at over 10,000 with the killings blamed on Japanese police, military and bands of vigilantes.
The Red Cross used the Taisho Era painting said to depict relief efforts following the quake to generate characters for the exhibition intended to raise awareness about the calamitous earthquake that struck on September 1, 1923.
The project generated characters from 20 people depicted in the painting. It used a database of about 600,000 words taken from stories of survivors’ accounts of the earthquake and its aftermath to create what the Red Cross called "new testimonies."
The use of the term sparked online outrage, with critics calling the planned exhibition "fake news" and "fabrication of history."
Criticism prompted the Red Cross to cancel the exhibition.
