Did Pope Francis really wear large white puffer coat? Viral image debugged here

A photo of Pope Francis wearing a massive white puffer coat has been circulating on social media platforms such as Reddit and Twitter. However, the image is completely fake and was produced using an artificial intelligence tool called Midjourney, which can generate extremely realistic fake images.

The picture was initially posted on Reddit before being shared on Twitter, where many people believed it to be authentic. Midjourney has recently been used to create photo-realistic images of former President Donald Trump's arrest, and even Trump himself shared a fake AI-generated image of himself praying. Although these images appear to be real photos at first glance, they are all digital fabrications of reality.





Internet investigators have found that when exposing these kinds of realistic fabrications, one of the most straightforward methods is to scrutinize the hands for any indications of artificial generation. Midjourney, for instance, has a hard time creating hands, and the Pope's picture is no exception. Although this could change in the future, it seems likely that this issue will persist for some time.

AI image generators like DALL-E, Stable Diffusion, and Midjourney use natural language descriptions to produce pictures. These tools have been trained on millions of online images, some of which may be copyright-protected. As a result, companies such as Getty Images have filed lawsuits alleging infringement of their intellectual property. According to court filings, Stable Diffusion's image generator occasionally includes a rough element resembling the Getty watermark, which could strengthen Getty's argument. The content these powerful software programs have been analyzing to generate images is undeniable.

The U.S. Copyright Office recently stated that AI-generated images cannot be protected by copyright, which is an interesting development for those interested in using such images in books and magazines. Although companies have only recently made AI image-generating tools available to the public, fake photos have existed since the invention of photography. The impact of these new AI programs on disinformation and misinformation remains to be seen, especially with Midjourney's ability to create convincing fakes with ease. As the 2024 presidential election approaches, which will feature a former president known for using fake photos, the situation could quickly become chaotic.

FAQs

Q1. What is DALL-E?
An app developed by OpenAI to generate digital images.

Q2. What was the childhood name of current Pope Francis?
Jorge Mario Bergoglio.