A viral photo of the RiverBeat Musical Festival’s crowd has been confirmed to have been edited, event organizers say.
In a statement from Forward Momentum, which organized the event, a spokeswoman said it was brought to their attention that the photographer had altered the image of the crowd at the weekend’s festival.
The photo, now deleted, was posted to the event’s social media page featuring elements users speculated to be “altered with AI.”
“The entire crowd along the inside of the fence appears to be altered with AI (weird body shapes, missing arms, blurs, etc.,” Jerred Price said on a Facebook post sharing the image with the festival’s watermark.
The spokeswoman, Michele Anderson, went on to say they had been “transparent about their numbers,” and the event had 30,000 people in attendance.
“We had no knowledge that this photographer altered the image until it was brought to our attention,” she said in a statement. “We will not be working with him going forward, and the image has been removed from all our social media channels.”
Despite this, the festival organizers said they are still “excited about the potential and early success of RiverBeat.”
