How to differentiate a real Taylor Swift and AI-generated Taylor Swift's Image?

These days, fake images generated using artificial intelligence, and deepfake videos where celebrities’ heads are superimposed on the bodies of other people, are increasingly more common.

Recently, fake photos of Taylor Swift in sexually suggestive and explicit positions were circulating on social media platform X.

How can you avoid being tricked? Let's checkout helpful tips to avoid deepfake videos and AI-generated images.

What are AI-generated images?

An AI images are the smart manipulation with original images. E.g., set a face to another person.

So, how do you check if an image is AI-generated? First, check out the source of the information you've received.

Is the source a news organization, or the verified account of a celebrity? Or is it just impersonating a legitimate organization or person?

If the image seems to come from a big news story, check the actual news. If something major has happened in the world.

Since data sets that train AI systems tend to only capture pieces of hands, the tech often fails to create lifelike human hands, for instance.

This can lead to images with stretchy wrists, spindly fingers, or too many digits. Keep an eye out for that.

Some AI image generators produce textures that are excessively smooth, which look too perfect. Also, when it's an image of a human, the skin can come out looking like plastic with a glossy sheen.

Watch out for inconsistencies in the logic of the image itself. For example, clothing fabric that blends together across different subjects, or background patterns that repeat perfectly.

Apart from the details, make sure you look at the big picture. First, check the lighting and the shadows, as AI often struggles with accurately representing these elements.

For example, shadows should align with the light sources and match the shape of the objects casting them.

If the image contains texts, such as panels, labels, or ads, take a closer look at them. AI-generated text tend to look pixelated.

When in doubt, always run the image through an AI image detector. Just save the image and pull up an AI image detector service.