Putin on his knee, the Pope's down jacket and Trump's arrest: how to recognize viral photos created by neural networks

March 2023 saw a real boom in the distribution of photos created using artificial intelligence. Among them are Vladimir Putin on his knee in front of Xi Jinping, the Pope in a down jacket, the arrested Donald Trump, the exhausted Julian Assange, etc. In this regard, we have compiled a guide on how to distinguish pictures of neural networks from real ones.

Arrested Donald Trump

From March 19 against the background messages that Donald Trump is likely to be arrested on charges related to paying hush money to porn actress Stormy Daniels, photos of the alleged detention of the former US President by the FBI and police have gone viral on social networks. In a short time, similar posts collected hundreds of thousands of views.

Trump presented charges of falsifying business records on March 30. On April 4 he went to the Manhattan District Attorney's office, where he was arrested and 34 counts were unsealed. Trump declared himself innocent and was released from the courtroom. The next hearing is scheduled for December 4.

At the same time, the first viral images of Trump’s arrest appeared on March 19, but not in media publications or on photo agency websites, but on Twitter by a user under the nickname The Infinite Dude - in his profile description indicatedthat he is a film maker working with artificial intelligence (AI). On March 20 he boastedthat Forbes magazine wrote an article about him, where it was stated that the photographs were fake. Journalists, like some users, noticedthat the hands of all the people in the frame seem deformed. This indicates the result of the neural networks. In April The Infinite Dude shared more several their works on the topic of Trump's arrest.

On March 21, a new batch of photos with Trump began to circulate: in one of them, the former president was running away from the police, but, judging by the rest, he was caught up and captured. If you look at the pictures in reverse order, it turns out that Trump broke free and was able to escape from law enforcement agencies.

Fact checkers from Associated Press (AP), Les Observateurs, Correctiv, Lead Stories And Newtral found that the images were created by journalist and founder of Bellingcat* Eliot Higgins, who published pictures on my personal Twitter page. In total, Higgins showed more than 50 photos created by neural networks on the topic of Trump’s arrest, trial and escape from prison. The date was not chosen by chance - Trump himself expectedthat he will be arrested on March 21.

Upon closer inspection, you will notice some details that betray the inauthenticity of the photographs. For example, in one photo Trump has no hand, in another there is no forearm or shoulder, and in the third he himself is dressed in a police uniform. Higgins reportedthat I was using the latest version Midjourney (V5) is a program that uses neural networks to create images based on text queries.

“In reality, the image of Trump's arrest simply showed how good and how bad Midjourney is at visualizing real-life scenes. For example, on first image of Trump with three legs and a police belt. I assumed people would realize that Donald Trump has two legs, not three. However, this does not seem to have stopped some from passing off the pictures as real [photos], highlighting the lack of critical thinking skills in our educational system." told Higgins speaking to AP.

On March 22, Higgins announced that he blocked on the Midjourney platform, and journalists toldwhat now it is forbidden create images if the word “arrested” is present in the request.

At the beginning of April, two more viral photos appeared: on one supposedly shows Trump and a column of his supporters returning to New York, and second - his mugshot, that is, a photo of the arrested person.

The first photo is signed by @Brick_Suit, a user who wrote, that he himself generated this image with with help Midjourney V5. This photo seems realistic only from afar, because upon closer inspection you can see that all the figures have distorted faces. In the second case, two details indicate a fake. First, according to media reports, Trump is not took pictures during the arrest. Secondly, the background shows a chaotic set of letters and numbers, which is typical for images from neural networks at this stage of technology development.

Fake

Vladimir Putin knelt before Xi Jinping

March 20, Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived on a state visit to Russia. On the same day, a photograph went viral on the Internet in which Putin is supposedly kneeling in front of the head of China and kissing his hand. For example, a tweet by American political consultant and Kyiv Post correspondent Jason Jay Smart with this photo dialed almost 800,000 views. According to the comments, many people wondered if the photo was real. The picture can also be found on Telegram (examples here And here).

The viral photo was sorted out by fact checkers of publications Correctiv, Newtral, Open, Newsweek And Deutsche Welle**, also a journalist Amanda Florian. They all analyzed the image, talked to experts and came to the conclusion that this image was created using AI.

The following main arguments can be identified as to why this is a fake photo:

1. not in any publication no link to the original source or name photographer;
2. room, furniture And shoes politicians on official published the pictures differ from those shown in the viral photo;
3. there are visual and optical anomalies.

Among such anomalies, the following are striking: the disproportionately large head and deformed shoe of the Russian president, the uneven edges of a column in the background, the unrealistic placement of table legs, the deformed ears of politicians, and the stuck fingers of a man in the background.

In addition, many fact checkers verified the photo using the tool AI-image-detector powered by Hugging Face is an image detector that allows you to determine whether a photo was created by AI. According to the program, it is more likely that the photo of Putin on his knee is not real.

Fake

Emmanuel Macron at street protests

Due to continued In France, during protests against pension reform on March 22, photos of the French president went viral on Twitter, showing him in the center of a demonstration surrounded by police. Tweet without explanation dialed several million views.

How report Journalists of the Les Observateurs project of the France 24 television channel, in some publications users directly indicate the use of artificial intelligence tools, but in other publications these images are given without context or corresponding caption and can therefore be misleading.

Fake

Pope Francis in a white down jacket

On March 24, an incredibly viral photo of the Pope appeared. It shows the pontiff wearing a traditional pileolus headdress and a modern white down jacket with a hood, with a cross on top of the jacket. For example, one the tweet with this photo received almost 28 million views at the time of writing, and another - 21 million. According to many comments from Internet users, including a TV presenter and model Chrissy Teigen, many believed that the photo of the head of the Catholic Church was genuine.

Since the photo spread all over the world, fact checkers from different countries wrote about it - publications published revelations about the photo Snopes, Correctiv, Lead Stories And Newtral. It turned out that the photo of dad in a down jacket appeared March 24 on the entertainment forum Reddit in the section dedicated to images generated in Midjourney. Moreover, three more versions of the fake photo were added in the original post. The author's account has already been deleted, but, according to the page code and web archive, his nickname is trippy_art_special.

BuzzFeed journalists found the creator of the generated image of the pope and we talked with him. He turned out to be Pablo Javier, a 31-year-old construction worker from Chicago, who refused to give his last name due to possible threats against him. He began working with Midjourney after his brother's death, using neural networks to recreate the image of a deceased relative. One day, under the influence of psychotropic substances, Pablo decided that it would be funny to portray Francis in a funny kurta from Balenciaga or Moncler. He posted the resulting images in the Facebook*** community AI Art Universe, and then on Reddit, where his profile will soon blocked. Pablo did not expect such a scale of distribution of the photo and said that he was scared because many people believed in the authenticity of the photo, and some used it to criticize the church. In this regard, Pablo believes that laws should be passed regulating the use of neural networks.

AI Expert Henry Azhder told Business Insider about the signs that indicate the artificial nature of the dad's photo. First, the hand holding the coffee cup looks deformed. Secondly, dad's glasses are not fully drawn and there is a discrepancy with their shadow. Thirdly, Ajer advises pay attention to textures: “One of the things that is noticeable when using the fifth version of Midjourney is that many of these images have a very distinctive plastic, hyper-realistic look, as if a filter had been applied to the photo.” He added that this may change as the platform evolves. The authors of The Verge also noted that the cross worn by the pontiff does not have right angles.

Fake

Elon Musk on dates

March 26 Twitter user under the nickname AllYourTech wrotethat the head of Tesla began dating Mary Barra, the CEO of General Motors, and accompanied the tweet with a photo of the couple. Later the same user reported, that a few hours later Musk was spotted walking with US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. In total, the two posts received almost 16 million views.

How reports Snopes publication, the author of these works turned out to be blogger Brian Lovett, who is on his YouTube channel told, which Midjourney used, but did not make the images "fully photorealistic", which again can be seen in the crooked fingers of the people captured. At the same time, Lovett clarified that he wanted to show to what level this technology has already been developed. According to him, this level is already a little scary. 

By the way, Musk himself responded to the viral tweet with Barra: having written: “I would never wear a suit like that.”

Fake

Photo of an unhealthy Julian Assange in prison

On March 30, 2023, a photo circulated purportedly showing WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange imprisoned in Britain's Belmarsh maximum security prison. In his post (155,000 views) a regular guest of Russian political talk shows, Yakov Kedmi wrote: “Apparently, the journalist is being subjected to inhumane torture.” The TV presenter also talked about this photo. Ruslan Ostashko (104,000 views), and in the publication that reposted (218,000) former Ukrainian journalist Dmitry Vasilets, claims that prison conditions have turned 51-year-old Assange into a “fading old man.” The photo also went viral Twitter and VKontakte, where the public post “Voice of Mordor” collected more than 1600 likes with 20,000 views.

Overlaid on top of the viral photo is a translucent inscription stating that this photo is the property of a certain “E”. Assange's wife Stella assertsthat the photo is a fake created by AI. As it turned out, the original photo appeared March 30 on Twitter by a user under the nickname @TheErrantFriend, which confirmed his authorship in personal correspondence with publications AP And Bild and said that he took the photo using the fifth version of Midjourney. According to The Errant Friend, who withheld his real name for security reasons, the image was created as part of the "viral movement to free Julian" to showcase Assange's "documented suffering at Belmarsh." Two weeks earlier The Errant Friend published another fake photo of the arrested Assange, which did not attract public attention.

Fake

Joe Biden celebrates Trump's indictment

March 31, Twitter user under the nickname @_johhnymaga published photos of US President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris and said that the day before they celebrated the release of the indictment against former President Donald Trump. The tweet received more than 500,000 views (at the time of writing this analysis it has already been deleted).

To the pictures turned Attention Snopes fact checkers. White House Deputy Press Secretary Andrew Bates told the publication that the photos were "not true." In addition, at the time of the alleged filming, Harris committed business visit to Africa. The fact that this is another work of Midjourney, again indicates hand defect: in the second photo, Harris appears to have six fingers.

Fake

In recent months, digital art created by neural networks has become a phenomenon. According to many experts in the field of artificial intelligence, Midjourney technologies are constantly evolving, so all the shortcomings mentioned above can be corrected in new versions of this neural network. However, there are also other programs with similar functionality, including DALL-E, Stable Diffusion And Crayon. However, for now, it is still possible to distinguish fake photos from real ones by following one or more of the steps below.

1. Try to find the original source of the image.

For this there is reverse search according to the picture in any from available services. It will also help you find similar photos to compare with the original photos. You should also pay attention to the superimposed inscriptions — among them may be the name of the author, the name or logo of the program used.

2. Look for information about the event captured in the photo in authoritative sources.

Maybe turn out to bethat the depicted event should not have happened yet or that the person from the photo was in a completely different place at the time of the alleged shooting. In addition, a refutation may already be published somewhere.

3. Pay attention to visual inconsistencies, strange details and artifacts.

More often Midjourney errors are related to the image fingers, limbs And teeth, and also proportions body and text (he it turns out either a meaningless set of symbols or incomprehensible scribbles). Worth considering background, textures, shadows, clothes (especially head ones dresses), intricate accessories, furniture and others items, which may look suspicious, unnatural and absurd.

4. Check photos through services Hugging Face or Replicate.

These platforms have detectors to identify images created by AI. However, sometimes they can misjudge genuine images are like fakes, so this tool can only be auxiliary.

*Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation contributed Bellingcat to the register of foreign and international non-governmental organizations whose activities are recognized as undesirable on the territory of Russia, as well as in list The media are foreign agents.

**Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation turned on Deutsche Welle to the register of foreign media acting as a foreign agent.

***Russian authorities think Meta Platforms Inc., which owns the social network Facebook, is an extremist organization; its activities in Russia are prohibited.

Cover photo: collage “Verified” / social networks / trippy_art_special / @EliotHiggins

Read on the topic:

1. Is it true that scientists have created a 3D model of the biblical Adam who looks like Vin Diesel?
2. Is it true that Putin had a bruise on his arm during his speech at Valdai?
3. Is the photo in which Biden put his hand on Zelensky’s buttocks true?
4. Is it true that foreign satirical magazines published these covers dedicated to the words of the Pope about the Chechens and Buryats?
5. Is it true that Emmanuel Macron tried to hide an €80,000 watch during an interview?