Alaska Republican Governor Mike Dunleavy transition plan for Donald Trump includes a long list of wishes for the next four years of federal government — namely, opening more land to oil and mining development, roads and logging.

It’s also accompanied by something else: a pair of sinister-looking bird-like silhouettes adorning the otherwise idyllic wild scene on the report’s cover page.

The two figures are dwarfed by a bear and a moose of more regular proportions that appear next to a lake and a cabin beneath craggy peaks.

But a few eagle-eyed observers have noticed strange avian shapes, prompting some puzzlement and laughter as well as a bit of derision from ornithology experts.

“I asked some of our most knowledgeable and esteemed birders and biologists to identify these birds, and their scientific and postdoctoral response was: ‘What the hell?'” , said Mr. Whitekeysthe musician and artist who also serves as board president of the Anchorage Audubon Society. “I guess it’s AI, and someone asked the AI ​​to generate a picture with a mountain, a moose, a bear, a lake, a cabin, and two piles of dog droppings. bear.”

Whitekeys, who emphasized that he was speaking only for himself and not the Audubon Society, is at least partly right: A Dunleavy spokesman, Jeff Turner, said he checked with a lawyer involved in the creating the report and that “the image was generated using ChatGPT” – a reference to one of the most popular AI chatbots.

Turner did not respond when asked to share the prompt that generated the image.

Asked about the origins of what appeared to a reporter to be satanic ducks, Craig Richards, the contract attorney, said the terms of his agreement with the state prohibited him from discussing his work without approval of the governor.

“I would love to talk about ducks,” said Richards, a former Alaska attorney general. “But that’s what my contract says.”

This image is the latest example of AI-generated errors creeping into official business, both at the state and national level. Earlier this year, Alaska Beacon revealed that a draft cell phone policy written by the state education commissioner relied on AI and included citations to studies that don’t exist.

Most famously, a former Trump lawyer, Michael Cohen, unwittingly gave his own lawyer legal citations that did not exist; instead, they were generated by Google’s AI assistant.

AI assistants are “great tools,” but they all rely on “some verification,” said Kenrick Mockartificial intelligence expert and dean of the engineering school at the University of Alaska Anchorage.

“We’ve seen several cases of this with text-generated documents, where if they’re not verified, they may not contain things that exist in reality, even if you want them to,” he said. declared.

The images of Alaska birds sparked a variety of reactions when they were posted on the Northern Journal’s social media accounts.

One person said it sounded like the Loch Ness Monster – if it lived beneath the surface of Wonder Lake, inside Denali National Park and Preserve.

“Please tell me this is at least from the free version” of the AI ​​software, another said.

Whitekeys, the musician and bird watcher, said he observed light shadows on the right sides of the moose and bear but, strangely, less so next to the waterfowl. He cheekily suggested that it corresponded to a “vampire grebe” – grebes are a species of diving bird – which casts no shadows at all.

“Vampire grebes or satanic vampire grebes – that’s a subspecies,” he said. “You know, they’re probably there because Mike Dunleavy and Donald Trump are committed to saving endangered species. And they are probably the only two birds of this species on the face of the Earth.

Nathaniel Herz is a journalist based in Anchorage. Subscribe to his newsletter, Northern Journalhas northjournal.com. Contact him at [email protected].