With the uptick on AI EVERYTHING it’s now becoming more important to not trust everything you see on the internet. You shouldn’t have before but now you may see something that is not just a well done photoshop but an image that is completely generated by AI. For example, every picture in this post has been generated by AI. There are telltale things to look for in images that I aim to point out to you so that you can’t be caught thinking there is such a thing as Dr Pepper Oreos (there isn’t yet…but Nabisco are you listening?).

We will start with the aforementioned Dr Pepper Oreo picture. You frequently see product images such as these that look like they can be legit but the telltales are clear in this image.  First, there’s several things in this picture. First, most of the text is indecipherable. Second are things that you see in the product design that you’d never see on Nabisco products.  When they brought out Swedish Fish flavored Oreos, the logo in the middle is still the Nabisco logo and not the Swedish Fish. This Dr Pepper Oreo pic has the logo for Dr Pepper on the cookie.  This isn’t something you’d normally see.  Nabisco has never done this with any any of their collabs.  So just on that alone you can tell that this is fake.

Current AIs also frequently have problems with feet and hands.  Count the fingers on the images and you can see  if it’s fake or not pretty often. A real woman would not have 6 fingers…or more. 🙂 This may get better soon but for now the images above can be determined as clearly fake.

Then there’s issues just with the AI trying to interpret what you said. The image above is supposed to be a man riding a tiger but it looks more like a horse? Plus you can’t see the stripes?

The images below were both generated saying using the phrase: Generate a picture of a woman taking a selfie. The first gets the woman part correct but she’s not taking a selfie and the second is not decipherable. Now this may be an indicator of the the quality of the generator I used called Midjourney  AI regularly can generate an image that makes no sense as evidenced by these pictures.

Probably the biggest tip I can give you out of this post is that people have been trying to falsify images for years now. First it was Photoshop and now it’s AI and it’s getting harder to decipher it. So here’s what I would do:

1. If you see an image of a product lie Dr Pepper Oreos….check the quality of the image first and sometimes that’s enough. Otherwise check the official website for the company. If it’s going to be real there may already be an announcement on the page.
2. If you see images that might look good make sure you look close at it. Look at the appendages as a clear telltale.
3. If you see a video of a presidential candidate AND it did not come from an official news media site or the candidates official social media presence this should be a huge red flag. Even if it sounds like the candidate.

The last point I will make is if it seems to good to be true it probably is false. Be careful out there and don’t be deceived. We are years before AI can be used to generate content indecipherable from real images. Hollywood should not fear AI yet.