This week's Met Gala in New York produced the usual array of strange and striking fashion statements from actors, artists and designers alike.
Some of these may have seemed just as innocuous as the Perry pictures – like the image that lit up social media in March 2023, which appeared to show Pope Benedict in a large, white puffer jacket. When AI image generation tools like OpenAI’s DALL-E 2 first attracted attention, many observers noted that – despite its impressive technology – it still struggled to replicate some very basic things.
"It helps to understand how AI images are created," said Dr Culloty."When someone instructs an AI tool to create an image, the tool puts effort into creating a convincing foreground, but the details and the background are often indistinct or distorted. In the now infamous 'Swag Pope’ image, for example the pontiff appears to be holding a takeaway coffee cup. But, on closer inspection, you can see his fist clenched over its lid, with the cup floating beneath it.
Mr O’Connor says people should scrutinise where the image comes from, who is sharing it, and whether someone could gain from giving a false impression to the public. Viewers should also question whether the image shows something that is realistic – and whether it is showing something that could a photographer could realistically have captured.
Indeed a number of newsrooms and organisations already have teams devoted to verifying or debunking misleading imagery, including those generated by AI.Google recently launched an image verification tool which aims to flag problematic pictures.