Artificial-Intelligence-Generated Fake Photographs

"Powerful AI systems should be developed only once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable."

Open letter: Artificial Intelligence experts/Industry Executives

"The letter isn't perfect, but the spirit is right; we need to slow down until we better understand the ramifications."

"The big players are becoming increasingly secretive about what they are doing which makes it hard for society to defend against whatever harms may materialize."

Professor Gary Marcus, New York University 

"The meme likely went viral because of the uncertainty about whether it was real or fake."

"It goes without saying that we can never again assume an image is authentic because it looks realistic."

Arvind Narayanan, professor of computer sciences, Princeton University

When the photograph of Pope Francis first appeared, wearing a branded winter puffer coat, people likely wondered where he had been that the Arctic chill required him to dress like that. We're not particularly given to doubting the evidence before our eyes. Anything that appears in public, in print or as photographic evidence is seldom questioned for its authenticity; we're that credulous. Seeing, after all, is believing, isn't it?

So, there was this photograph of Pope Francis appearing just prior to the fifth Sunday of Lent. Pope Francis in a long, white designer puffer coat retailing at $3,000, his pectoral cross and white skullcap completing the picture of the Holy Father. Holy smoke, it's a fake! The coat is huge, gleaming white with an outsized hood: "What the wealthiest 26-year-olds are wearing currently around SoHo."

According to the fact-checking website Snopes, the generative AI program Midjourney created the image which later appeared on the sub-reddit r/Midjourney. But wait: it's not the only fake image doing the rounds of the Internet. There are a few others highlighting another infamous world figure. One recently in the news in a scandalous, as in criminal wrong-doing manner for which he has been charged.

Speculation was going the rounds whether Donald Trump would show up handcuffed, in court.

 

What's blurry here? Look at the faces in the crowd   Elliot Higgins

 

Media experts are doing a second-take with the obviousness of how artificial intelligence might and will be used with ease in the creation of propaganda; weaponized in other words, as a destabilizing tool. Which led Elon Musk and a coterie of artificial intelligence experts and industry executives to call for a six-month break in ongoing development of AI. In an open letter, they cite the risk potential to humanity.

The potential civilizational risks posed by human-competitive AI systems in the form of economic and political disruptions were listed in the group letter of alarmed caution, alerting developers to work with policy makers on governance and regulatory authorities. Over a thousand individuals signed the letter, inclusive of Stability AI CEO Emad Mostaque, researchers at Alphabet-owned DeepMind, and AI heavyweights Yoshua Bengio, and Stuart Russell, a pioneer of research in the field.

Donald Trump himself shared an image on his Truth Social sitem depicting a likeness of himself kneeling in prayer under dramatic lighting. Once it began making appearance rounds on social media it was revealed as a "deep fake". 

 

Former US President Trump posted this AI-generated image of himself, but a closer look shows he is missing fingers  Truth Social

 

The photograph of the white-coated Pope was actually created by a 31-year-old construction worker in Chicago. He was floating a little high on magic mushrooms when he thought up the idea. "I just thought it was funny to see the Pope in a funny jacket", he revealed in a later interview. 

“I’m trying to figure out ways to make something funny because that’s what I usually try to do."

“I try to do funny stuff or trippy art — psychedelic stuff. It just dawned on me: I should do the Pope. "

"Then it was just coming like water: ‘The Pope in Balenciaga puffy coat, Moncler, walking the streets of Rome, Paris,’ stuff like that.”

Pablo Xavier, BuzzFeed News

One of Pablo Xavier's other AI-generated images of the Pope   Pablo Xavier