- Kayleen Devlin & Joshua Cheetham
- BBC News
image source, Truth Social
Former US President Donald Trump posted this AI-generated image of himself, but a closer look shows he’s missing fingers.
All the images published in this article are false.
Fake images created by artificial intelligence (AI) tools portraying Donald Trump have surfaced on social media over the past week.
Many falsely showed the arrest of the former president, who has said that he may face an indictment in the coming days for the alleged payment of money to a woman with whom he had a relationship.
At the moment, the former president has not been charged with any crime.
Many of those who shared the images pointed out that they were fake and didn’t seem to fool many people, but some did appear to be fooled.
Thursday, Trump also shared an image generated by AI on his own social network, Truth Social. She showed him kneeling in prayer.
What are some of the telltale signs of AI-generated images? And how can you tell the real from the fake?
Is there something you see strange?
image source, Twitter
This image looks realistic, but take a closer look at Trump’s right arm and neck.
Images circulating on the internet, like the one above, appear hyper-realistic, more like staged artistic shots than in-the-moment photographs.
A closer look shows some obvious clues that something isn’t quite right.
Look at the center of the image. Trump’s arm is too shortand the police officer on the left is grabbing something that looks more like a claw than a human hand.
Similarly, if you focus on the trump neckyou’ll notice that his head appears to be superimposed on the image.
Henry Ajder, an AI expert and host of the BBC radio series The Future Will be Synthesisedsays that current technology is not very good at rendering certain parts of the body, especially the hands.
“If you zoom in on the images, you can often see inconsistencies, like the number of fingers,” he says.
What do others say?
a simple check some news sites it’s a surefire way to check that Trump hasn’t been arrested or even charged—at least, not yet.
If and when Trump faces charges, it will be front-page news around the world. And you can imagine the media uproar if the former president somehow ran away from the police.
Another good idea is to think about the context in which an image is shared. Who shares it and what are their motives?
Often people share images to amplify their political views, even without verifying that the photos are authenticsays Ajder.
“We’ve seen really crude examples of other forgeries, like Nancy Pelosi being slowed down to look drunk,” he adds. “That was a crude manipulation, and yet many were fooled by it, or at least wanted to believe it.”
image source, Eliot Higgins
What is blurry here? Look at the faces in the crowd.
A closer look at the photos reveals more dubious details.
Los skin tonesunnatural and the faces with waxy or blurred features are strong indications that the image is fake.
In the image above, a person with a blurred face is clearly visible in the top right. And Trump’s hair appears blurry, while his face is in focus.
image source, Eliot Higgins
Are those cops really after Trump or are they looking for something else?
Furthermore, artificial intelligence technology has not yet mastered accurate representations of the eyes.
In the image above, the agents appear to be chasing Trump, but they’re looking in a totally different direction.
Problems in the future?
Artificial intelligence experts told the BBC that while fake images are “nothing new”, the speed of progress within the field and the potential for misuse are something to worry about.
“Synthetic content is evolving at a fast pace and the gap between authentic and fake content is getting harder to decipher,” says Mounir Ibrahim of Truepic, a digital content analytics company.
Experts agree that Trump’s fame makes counterfeits easy to spot. But images from unknown people could make the task difficult, and technology improves all the time.
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