Russia cracks down on AI bears as real attacks spread fear

A woman in Russia's Far East was fined this week after an AI-generated image of a bear, created to prank a friend, went viral ​and triggered a real-life hunt, the regional courts said.

Russian authorities are ‌on high alert this year due to a spate of deadly attacks in several regions, where growing bear populations and a poor crop of berries and pine nuts have increased the ​chances of encounters with humans, experts say.

The resident of Magdagachi settlement, ​Amur region, used ChatGPT to generate the picture of a large ⁠brown bear seemingly strolling down a local street and sent it to ​her friend in September.

"The joke quickly got out of control. The photograph of ​the bear spread through messaging apps, and police began receiving alarmed calls from residents," the Amur courts' press service said in a statement, describing how the district head dispatched wildlife ​rangers to deal with the phantom animal.

The woman called police and confessed to ​creating the image. A court this week ordered her to pay a fine of 15,000 ‌roubles ($178), ⁠it said.

In mid-September, another woman in the eastern Transbaikal region was fined 30,000 roubles for posting a fake image of a bear in a village, Russian legal news agency RAPSI reported.

This year, at least 26 people have been killed ​in bear attacks ​since the spring, ⁠when hungry bears emerge from hibernation, news agency RIA Novosti said on Monday.

In response to the attacks, the government said ​last month it was drawing up urgent measures to ​control the ⁠brown bear population, which has more than doubled in the last three decades to 308,000, in part due to shorter and milder winters.

Since the start of the ⁠year, ​over 3,440 bears have been killed that were ​deemed to pose a threat to humans, according to a tally compiled by state news agency TASS ​and published on October 10.