UPSC Prelims Practice Questions — ‘Dangerous misinformation’: experts decry AI wildlife visuals
Q1. Consider the following statements regarding two 2026 scientific publications on artificial intelligence and wildlife imagery:
1. The 2026 Conservation Biology article addresses threats to conservation arising from AI-generated wildlife images and videos, while the 2026 Nature Ecology & Evolution piece addresses the contamination of citizen science platforms by generative AI.
2. The Nature Ecology & Evolution piece treats generative 'enhancement' of genuine photographs as a distinct risk, because the artefacts it introduces can obscure identifying field marks and lead to misidentification.
3. The illustrative case discussed in the Nature Ecology & Evolution piece involved a purported first Brazilian record of a red-winged blackbird submitted to the Macaulay Library, later shown to be an epaulet oriole.
Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
- The 2026 Conservation Biology article addresses threats to conservation arising from AI-generated wildlife images and videos, while the 2026 Nature Ecology & Evolution piece addresses the contamination of citizen science platforms by generative AI.
- The Nature Ecology & Evolution piece treats generative 'enhancement' of genuine photographs as a distinct risk, because the artefacts it introduces can obscure identifying field marks and lead to misidentification.
- The illustrative case discussed in the Nature Ecology & Evolution piece involved a purported first Brazilian record of a red-winged blackbird submitted to the Macaulay Library, later shown to be an epaulet oriole.
- A. 1 and 2 only
- B. 2 and 3 only
- C. 1 and 3 only
- D. 1, 2 and 3
Q2. In the 2026 Nature Ecology & Evolution commentary on citizen science and generative AI, the 'over-enhancement' of wildlife photographs refers to which one of the following?
- A. Generative processing of a genuine photograph that introduces artefacts and alters diagnostic field marks, causing the animal to be misidentified
- B. Repeated lossy compression of a genuine photograph during upload, reducing resolution below the level at which the animal can be identified
- C. Excessive camera-trap flash that overexposes an animal's pelage pattern, preventing recognition of individuals in a monitoring dataset
- D. Aggressive cropping of a genuine photograph that removes the habitat context needed to verify the record against the species' known range
Q3. In the first Snow Leopard Population Assessment in India, which one of the following recorded the second highest number of snow leopards?
- A. Uttarakhand
- B. Himachal Pradesh
- C. Arunachal Pradesh
- D. Jammu and Kashmir
Q4. Project Snow Leopard and the national assessment of snow leopard numbers in the Indian Himalaya are steered by which one of the following Union Ministries?
- A. The Ministry of Earth Sciences, which runs India's high-altitude and cryosphere observation programmes
- B. The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, in consultation with the Himalayan States and partner agencies
- C. The Ministry of Jal Shakti, through its Department of Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation
- D. The Ministry of Science and Technology, through the Department of Biotechnology's wildlife genomics programme
Q5. As assessed for the IUCN Red List, the number of Tapanuli orangutans surviving in the wild is closest to which one of the following?
- A. 800
- B. 2,500
- C. 14,000
- D. 1,04,000
Q6. Which one of the following correctly describes the Tapanuli orangutan?
- A. A great ape species formally described in 1996, restricted to the Leuser ecosystem of Aceh, and the first new great ape described since the 1950s
- B. A great ape species formally described in 2017, restricted to the Batang Toru ecosystem of North Sumatra, and the first new great ape described since the 1920s
- C. A subspecies of the Bornean orangutan recognised in 2001, restricted to the Mahakam basin of Kalimantan, and the smallest of the recognised orangutan taxa
- D. A great ape species formally described in 2020, restricted to the lowland forests of Sabah in Malaysian Borneo, and the first new great ape described since the 1960s
Q7. Part III of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules — the Code of Ethics and the three-tier grievance mechanism for digital news publishers and curated-content platforms — is administered by which one of the following?
- A. The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting
- B. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology
- C. The Department of Telecommunications, Ministry of Communications
- D. The Press Council of India, a statutory body
Q8. In the criticism levelled by conservation biologists against viral AI wildlife visuals, the 'anthropomorphism' of such content refers to which one of the following?
- A. Portraying wild animals as performing human-like emotional or altruistic acts, such as one species tenderly rescuing the young of another
- B. The permanent and total loss of a wild animal's fear of people, which necessarily follows from any exposure to tourists in a protected area
- C. The exclusive use of images shot by human wildlife photographers as the entire training corpus for generative image models
- D. Scaling a wild animal against a human figure in a frame so that viewers can judge its true body size and build
Q9. After a woman was mauled by a snow leopard in China's Xinjiang region in January 2026 while approaching it for a photograph, the stepped-up patrolling and the public safe-distance advisory were issued by which one of the following?
- A. The forestry department, which administers wildlife and protected areas
- B. The public security bureau, which handles policing and emergency response
- C. The ministry of ecology and environment, which handles pollution control and environmental impact appraisal
- D. The emergency management authority, which coordinates disaster and hazard response
Q10. The periodic census of Irrawaddy dolphins in Chilika, which holds the bulk of Odisha's population of the species, is conducted by which one of the following?
- A. The Wildlife Wing of the Forest, Environment and Climate Change Department, Government of Odisha
- B. The Chilika Development Authority, the State body set up for the lagoon's management
- C. The Zoological Survey of India, the national faunal survey organisation under MoEFCC
- D. The Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun, the autonomous institute under MoEFCC
Q11. With reference to the 2026 commentary in Nature Ecology & Evolution on generative AI and citizen science, consider the following statements:
1. Its principal recommendation is the compulsory retention of raw camera-trap files by national governments, in preference to educating contributors.
2. It names iNaturalist and the Macaulay Library among the citizen science resources whose scientific utility is at risk.
3. It distinguishes two pathways of contamination: the submission of AI-generated or AI-manipulated media, and the generative enhancement of genuine images in a way that degrades diagnostic detail.
Which of the statements given above is/are correct?
- Its principal recommendation is the compulsory retention of raw camera-trap files by national governments, in preference to educating contributors.
- It names iNaturalist and the Macaulay Library among the citizen science resources whose scientific utility is at risk.
- It distinguishes two pathways of contamination: the submission of AI-generated or AI-manipulated media, and the generative enhancement of genuine images in a way that degrades diagnostic detail.
- A. 1 and 2 only
- B. 2 and 3 only
- C. 1 and 3 only
- D. 1, 2 and 3