By Daysia Tolentino -
NBC News
Internet users praised Pope Francis' style over the weekend, after images of the pontiff wearing fashionable clothing surfaced.
But
the images of Francisco in a striking, puffy white coat were, in fact, fake
.
The AI-generated "photos" appear to have first appeared on Friday on a
subreddit
(a forum within the social platform Reddit) dedicated to commenting on the Midjourney AI program, before being widely circulated on Twitter.
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The images misled many users, in one of the first cases of large-scale misinformation from an AI image.
As AI programs become more accessible, users can create all kinds of super-realistic, fake images.
Although many of these new programs have flaws, they continue to improve, making it increasingly difficult to tell the real thing from the fake.
Even the American celebrity Chrissy Teigen was fooled.
“I thought the pope's puffy coat was real.
I did not hesitate one second.
There is no way it will survive the future of technology,” she commented in a tweet.
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"I found out today that this image of Pope Francis in a puffy coat was AI generated (...) This is the first time I've been fooled with an AI generated image," said another Twitter user.
According to Google Trends, Internet searches for photos of the pope increased when the image was posted on Twitter.
One of the pope's puffy coat tweets had been forwarded more than 25,000 times as of Monday afternoon.
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The pope's image circulated just days after
AI-generated images of former President Donald Trump being arrested went viral.
Although many users were skeptical of the images of Trump, a large number of them believed that those of the pope were real, illustrating that AI realism is on the rise.
Still, some details revealed that the pope's images had been AI-generated: his hands appeared crooked and the crucifix was misshapen.
The creator of the pope image did not immediately respond to requests for comment from NBC News.
But in an interview with Buzzfeed he said that "I thought it was funny to see the pope in a funny coat."
He added that it was "definitely scary" that "people would accept (the image) as real without question."