By Matt Martino
Copyright abc
Ocularist Jack McDonald has been ordered to temporarily stop operating while the Victorian Health Complaints Commissioner continues an investigation into his work.
The ABC has heard from several of Mr McDonald’s clients who are unhappy with the prosthetic eyes he has made for them, which they have described as ill-fitting and unrealistic.
An ABC NEWS Verify investigation of Mr McDonald’s website and YouTube channel reveals multiple examples of borrowed and AI-generated content.
Mr McDonald’s website and YouTube channel have been removed from the internet and the interim prohibition order from the commissioner mean he cannot advertise his services.
But ABC NEWS Verify has looked at an archived version of the website as well as a now-deleted YouTube video and found a few peculiarities.
They might not be suspicious on their own, but put together they paint a picture of an inauthentic online presence.
A video on his YouTube channel features a man presenting an introduction to the business, but using a reverse-image search, ABC NEWS Verify was able to find other instances of the same person in other videos on the internet.
One of the reverse-image searches leads to another YouTube channel in which the man with conspicuously consistent hair is speaking, in Bulgarian, about oxidised bitumen.
This is an indication that the presenter is AI-generated.
While there might be legitimate reasons to use an AI presenter, there were other elements of the website that were more concerning.
Borrowed imagery
Reverse-image searches of some of the photos used on the webpage revealed they were present on other sites and appear to have been borrowed.
With a profession as specialised as making prosthetic eyes, you would probably expect to see more pictures of original work.
This image appears to have been taken from the Facebook page of a Finnish ocularist and was first posted in 2021.
Another image can be traced back to the website of UK-based ocularist Lorna Rynne of Kind Eyes Prosthetics.
Ms Rynne confirmed the photo was hers and said she felt “angry” that it had been used to promote someone else’s business without her knowledge.
“There is no reason to use the work of others to advertise yourself unless you are attempting to hide the quality – or lack thereof – of your own work,” she told the ABC.
Stock image of receptionist
Then there is the image of “Nadia” the receptionist.
If you do a reverse-image search her you get more than 60 results, suggesting hers is a stock image.
She appears on a dentistry blog, for example, as well as on the website of a self-help guru, where she is referred to as “Donna”.
If a business is using stock imagery to portray staff members, it might be an indication that it does not have any staff at all, although there might be legitimate privacy reasons to use such images.
But if there are multiple types of unauthentic content on a website, it is a warning that the business itself may not be authentic and that extra research may be warranted.
ABC NEWS Verify asked Mr McDonald about all of these examples of unauthentic content but did not receive a response.
How to reverse-image search
So how easy is it for the average person to detect borrowed or fake imagery? It is not as difficult as you might think.
If you are on a desktop computer and using a Google Chrome browser you can do a reverse-image search by right-clicking on the image and selecting search.
A sidebar will appear listing where that image has been used on the internet.
You can also download the image and paste it into any reverse-image search engine, including Google, Bing or TinEye.
If you are on a phone, take a screenshot of the image, save it to your camera reel and upload it to one of those websites.
Just remember that the internet makes it easy to present a legitimate-looking website to the world and the prevalence of artificial intelligence is making this easier still.
