[tiew9Vii]

Regardless of how many people it disrupted or not, it’s not a non story.

It’s highlighted a weakness. It’s easy to disrupt national infrastructure by generating realistic hoax photos/videos with very little effort from anywhere in the world.

[defrost]

It's not a new story, nor has it highlighted a new weakness - people have had the ability to claim tracks are covered in stone or by a dead cow for a good many years now.

Tracks have cameras to rapidly discount big claims, in this specific case there was an actual earthquake which should (and likely did, the story doesn't drill down very deep) have triggered a manual track inspection for blockages and ballast shifts in of itself.

[silversmith]

If I do a prank call, it's easy to see the intent to disrupt.

If I post AI generated images to twitter, and those get amplified by my followers (that might or might not be real people) enough to surface on some rail engineers feed, well, that's just me showcasing my art, no harm intended, right?

[defrost]

If I if enough hypothetical if's that's just a giant empty if, right?

It'd be useful if commenters view this from the pragmatic real world track maintainance PoV.

Verifiable calls from the public about blocked lines made to official numbers with traceback etc. carry more weight than social media buzz.

In urban rail the bulk of AI generated images can be discounted via camera feeds and sensors (eg: there's no indication of a line break so that image is BS).

There are already procedures to sift prank calls from things that need checking, to catch serial offenders and numbnuts that push bricks from overpasses.

In the specific instance of you hypothetically "just me showcasing my art, no harm intended" .. in a UK jurisdiction that would fall to the estimation of the opinion held by a man on the Clapham omnibus as channeled by a world weary judge with an arse sore from decades of having such stories paraded before them by indolent smirking cocksures.

YMMV.