Hollywood’s lack of originality is starting to bleed into real life. According to a BBC report, a South Korean man was arrested for his 2020s AI reboot of The Boy Who Cried Wolf, after sharing an AI-generated picture of a wolf roaming the streets of Daejeon. The crime? The wolf, a real zoo escapee named Neukgu, wasn’t actually there.
Neukgu is a two-year-old wolf and part of an effort to reintroduce the species to South Korea. He escaped his enclosure on April 8. Authorities deployed drones for aerial coverage, deployed emergency crews on the ground, and told the public to be on the lookout for a gray wolf roaming the city streets. For as globally relevant as South Korea can be at times, it’s easy to forget it’s a fairly small nation; by land area, it hovers somewhere around Indiana or Kentucky. So when even the country’s president weighed in on the story, urging emergency crews to safely recover the wolf, it’s a reminder that in a nation so small, all politics is truly local.
This Man’s AI Wolf Photo Got Him Arrested During a Real Zoo Escape
When an AI-generated image of Neukgu casually strutting through a city intersection went viral, it caught the attention of authorities, who treated it as credible. They sent out emergency alerts, and search teams were redirected. The picture was even presented at a press briefing. It’s like The Fugitive, but for a fake wolf.
Emergency crews were already stretched thin at the time, so you can imagine how annoyed everyone was when it was soon discovered to be fake. The man responsible for creating and spreading the picture was tracked down and explained to the authorities that he did it for fun. The problem is that Neukgu had sparked a craze across South Korean internet culture, and this guy was throwing realistic-enough evidence into the fray. Now he’s facing a possible five years in prison for allegedly disrupting government operations.
As for the wolf itself, Neukgu spent a total of nine days out and about before being tranquilized near an expressway. He was unharmed, aside from the discovery of a small fishing hook in his stomach, which was safely removed by veterinarians.
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