Holy haute couture

As much as we’d love to report on the above swagged-out Pope Francis strutting into St. Peter's Square clutching a limited-edition Bible covered in Swarovski crystals, we cannot.

Because this photo isn’t real. But that didn’t stop it from going viral this past weekend.

The image was made by a popular AI-image creation tool called Midjourney. Looking closely, you can see the flaws: unrealistic smears, blurs, and the biggest AI-image tell of all, weird fingers (yes, for some reason, the AI simply cannot draw fingers).

So why did it go viral? Well, to put it bluntly, people aren’t spending much time inspecting the photos they see online, especially hyper-realistic photos of celebrities. Plus, if you see everyone else talking about the image as real, there's probably no reason why you would think it isn't.

🌐 Zoom out: The pope isn't the only one getting the AI-treatment. Fake photos of Elon Musk holding hands with AOC, Emmanuel Macron running through tear gas, and Donald Trump getting arrested have all gone viral recently.

And the party's just getting started. Remember the 'crazy fingers’ problem? Midjourney reportedly released a fix earlier this month. Now the platform generates flawless, five-fingered hands.

👋 Bottom line: Even with the upgrade to perfect paws, experts say there are a handful of ways to check if an image is AI-generated: using a reverse image search, looking for watermarks, checking the 'grain,' and watching for lighting and proportion errors.