Another building tilts in Topsia
After Baghajatin and Tangra, another instance of a tilted building at Topsia came to the fore today, leading to panic among the local residents.
A social media post by the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) showcasing a cleanliness drive at a waterbody in Tangra, in the eastern part of Kolkata, has drawn flak online for allegedly using an AI software to touch up a photograph of a “clean waterbody” in Tangra.
The post was shared amid the KMC’s ongoing five-day “Swachhta Se Swagat” cleanliness campaign, being carried out across all 144 municipal wards in the city ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s scheduled visit.
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KMC has, meanwhile, tendered an apology for the post. The civic body launched the drive as a special cleanliness and beautification initiative to welcome Modi.
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Here’s what happened
On 17 June, KMC’s official social media page published before-and-after photographs of a pond near Pulin Khatick Road in Ward 58 under the campaign. Pulin Khatick Road is located in the Tangra area, a densely populated part of eastern Kolkata that has a mix of residential neighbourhoods, commercial establishments and waterbodies.
The images appeared to show a significant improvement and clean-up of the waterbody, with floating waste and debris removed from the surface following a cleaning exercise.
The photographs uploaded by KMC on 17 June carried geographical coordinates identifying the location of the waterbody. The timestamp embedded in the image read 1.05 pm.
The photographs showed the same background structures and surroundings, indicating that both images were taken at the same location.
The post quickly gained traction online, drawing thousands of reactions and hundreds of comments and shares.
While many users welcomed the apparent improvement in the pond’s condition, some social media users raised questions regarding the authenticity of the photographs.
Among them was social media user Triparna Banerjee, who commented on the KMC Facebook post, “Is that a Gemini logo?” Banerjee also uploaded a marked-up image with a red circle around a section of the pond bank in the “after” photograph, claiming that it appeared to show the upper edge of the logo associated with Google’s Gemini artificial intelligence platform.
The comment triggered discussion among users, although no conclusive evidence emerged to support claims that the image had been generated or altered using artificial intelligence.
This, in turn, led to an apology post that was issued by the civic body on 18 June.
The apology post
In the apology post, the civic body said, “We sincerely apologise for the earlier error. Here is an update on the cleaning activity on the water body. We thank the citizens of Kolkata for always helping us serve you better.”
The updated post included another set of before-and-after photographs of the waterbody along with its geo-tagged location. The timestamp visible on the updated images read 12.20 pm on 18 June.
Enquiry launched
A senior KMC official said the civic body has initiated an enquiry into the incident.
“We have uploaded fresh images of the cleaning activity at the waterbody. We have also issued an apology on our official social media handle,” the official told The Statesman on condition of anonymity.
KMC has not specified the nature of the “earlier error” referred to in its apology.
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