Another triumph of AI?: stylish dad Francisco Balenciaga

A new hoax wins the round between AI and user experience on social media as AI-generated photo Pope Francisco in a striking white Balenciaga jacket, he caused heated debate.

This is not the first image these days to confuse public opinion, as last week some photos of an arrested Donald Trump also misled several.

It looks like the image was first posted online on Friday and posted to a subreddit for AI Imager Midjourney. Over the weekend, it circulated on Twitter and other social networks, first as a meme, and then as a subject for exposure. By Sunday, Chrissy Teigen was tweet about it, a reliable indicator that the Internet joke has become popular.

“I thought the Pope’s jacket was real, and didn’t hesitate for a long time. I will not survive the future of technology in any way,” Teigen tweeted, summarizing the responses of many internet users. In their replies, someone said they thought they were calling it artificial intelligence. was joke, and Teigen replied, “Oh man, now I’m REALLY confused. It’s real? I hate myself lol.”

The image is definitely fake. Not only was it posted to the Midjourney subreddit along with three alternatives (Midjourney usually generates four images in response to each post), it also contains clear signs of AI, including several areas where details are clearly blurred. There is not quite a hand that is not holding a cup of coffee; a crucifix without regular right angles, depicting Jesus if he had been molded from clay and sat; and the edge of the lens of the glasses somehow turns into its own shadow, which indicates the generation of AI.

However, another theory as to why the photo was considered real is due to an interesting theory put forward by journalist Ryan Broderick.

“My theory as to why it fools so many people (including me initially) is that the Pope aesthetically exists in the same strange valley as most AI arts.”