Reality Vs. AI. How sharp is your eye?
Let's play a game.
Whilst perusing Twitter last week, I came across the photographer Mike Schmidt’s diptych of an AI image alongside one of his photos. He invited his followers to determine which photo was which: reality vs. AI?
In Schmidt’s experiment, over 2,600 people voted and 73.6% of them guessed correctly.
For those of us who are not used to looking at AI images (yet) and who’ve never played this game before (and yes, it will soon cease to be a game), picking out the fake image is not that easy. We’ve seen this recently play out with viral AI images of Trump being arrested and the Pope wearing Balenciaga. Many people, including a celebrity, have fallen for the fakes.
A quick search on Twitter unearths many more memes using AI: the Pope at Burning Man, setting up a crypto wallet and looking tough in Yeezy are just a few.
Let’s get back to Schmidt and his question: real or fake? With our brains are already accustomed to seeing digital photography, filters, retouching, and all of the rest on a regular basis, Schmidt’s AI images don’t seem that far removed from reality. In his tweet, he mentioned, “there are always clues.” And in this day and age, I think it might behoove us all to know some of these clues (stay tuned as tomorrow’s newsletter will break them down).
In the meantime, let’s see if you can pick out Schmidt’s real images from the AI generated ones:
Did you find that exercise easy? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
We’ll be revealing the answers in tomorrow’s newsletter. Plus we’ll hear more from Schmidt about how he got these AI images to look so similar to his originals.
Oh and if you want to cheat, we won’t judge you! Click on the button below to find out what is (really) what.