(Adnkronos) – New regulations have come into force in Japan, allowing police to use rifles to shoot and kill bears if necessary. These measures were decided in response to a worrying increase in reported attacks against the population in some areas of the Land of the Rising Sun. According to the Ministry of the Environment, from April to early November, there have been 13 deaths caused by bear attacks. This is a record, highlights the Kyodo agency, while the Guardian reports that experts are talking about a flood of AI-generated videos that ‘show’, in an extremely realistic way, encounters between people and bears, and only serve to fuel the climate of tension in a country where sightings numbered approximately 20,7000 between April and September, about 7,000 more than in the same period last year.
In reality, it is in the prefectures of Iwate and Akita, in northeastern Japan, that the highest number of attacks has been reported, and now in each prefecture – explains Kyodo – there will be two task forces with one person in command, a liaison officer with local authorities, and two sharpshooters. In some areas of Akita prefecture, the situation is such that, the Guardian recalls, Japanese post offices have been forced to suspend mail collection and delivery operations. According to experts, food scarcity drives animals away from their habitat. But, “feeding a bear is extremely dangerous,” warned Shinsuke Koike, a professor at Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, in statements to Yomiuri Shimbun. And, he explained, “if you encounter a bear, do not approach it, move away from the area.” The public is urged to use multiple sources to “verify that information obtained from social media is correct.”
There is indeed a fear that the proliferation of videos could create misunderstandings about how to react in case of a ‘close encounter’. Searching for the words ‘bear’ and ‘video’ on TikTok, the newspaper discovered that about 60% of one hundred selected clips are produced with artificial intelligence. Among the fake videos, “evidently created with artificial intelligence,” Yomiuri Shimbun reported a clip of an elderly woman feeding a bear in a field, one of a high school girl ‘fighting’ a bear bare-handed in the middle of the city, and one of a bear running away with a dog in its jaws.
