The ultimate guide to spotting AI

We are officially living in the age of deepfakes, AI art, fake news reports and music made by algorithms with too much free time. 

AI isn’t just helping us pick what series to binge anymore, it’s here making photorealistic images and faking entire videos. 

As impressive as it is, this tech can also be dangerously deceiving. 

While most of it is harmless fun, there’s a serious side to it too. 

So how can you spot what’s real and what’s AI-generated? Let’s break it down:

ALSO READ: Woman loses job for using ChatGPT

How to spot AI-generated pictures

AI art generators like DALL·E, MidJourney, and Stable Diffusion are capable of creating super realistic images.

You might even think they were snapped by a National Geographic photographer on holiday in Atlantis. 

Thankfully, even the best AIs still leave digital fingerprints.

Here’s what to look out for:

• Hands: AI struggles with human hands. Look for extra fingers, fused fingers, melted palms, or hands that look like they belong to a wax figure that got left in the sun.

• Weird background: Text in the background often makes no sense. A restaurant sign might read “FLOOBER BARG,” and book titles on shelves will look like ancient hieroglyphics.

• Over-symmetry & perfect lighting: AI-generated portraits often look too perfect. Every strand of hair is in place, everyone’s skin looks flawless, or the lighting is so perfectly diffused it would make a professional photographer sob into their ring light.

• Inconsistent details: Look at earrings, shirt buttons, jewellery, or shadows. AI often forgets to match things up. A person might be wearing a watch on one wrist in one part of the picture and on the other wrist seconds later.

If you’re still confused, use Google Reverse Image Search to trace where the image came from. If it doesn’t exist anywhere else on the web, it’s probably AI. Kinda like Pope Trump here...

How to spot AI-generated videos

Deepfakes are the scary older cousin of AI pictures. They can swap faces, mimic voices, and alter movements so convincingly that you might see a video of your favourite politician endorsing pineapple on pizza.

Here’s how to tell if it’s legit:

• Eye movement and blinking issues: Human eyes are expressive and move naturally. AI often makes people blink less, stare too intensely, or blink in an unnatural, almost mechanical way.

• Lip-sync problems: The mouth might not fully match the audio. If the person’s lips don’t quite wrap around the words naturally (like when your friend tries to sing along to an Eminem song), it’s probably AI.

• Skin texture and lighting glitches: AI can struggle with realistic skin tone transitions and reflections. Look for weird flickers, patches, or areas of skin that stay unnaturally perfect while everything else moves.

• Weird head or body movements: AI deepfakes sometimes glitch when the person turns their head too quickly or moves their hands a lot.
  

How to hear AI-generated music

AI is also making music that sounds too good to not be real, but it isn’t. Whether it’s an AI Taylor Swift song or AI-made beats used by TikTok influencers, it’s a whole vibe.

Listen out for:

• Flat, emotionless vocals: Even with voice cloning, AI vocals sometimes sound too polished or sterile (like a robot doing karaoke).

• Lyrics that don’t quite make sense: AI-generated lyrics can be repetitive, slightly off-topic, or filled with weird metaphors like “I feel like a cloud in a box of spaghetti.” No human wrote that.

• Super-clean, too-perfect production: AI music can sound overly smooth, without the small imperfections that give human-made music its soul. Drum kicks and transitions might be too robotic or formulaic.

• Lack of dynamic variation: Human producers instinctively know when to drop the bass, add tension, or give a song breathing space. AI sometimes misses these natural changes in tempo and mood.
  

ALSO READ: The most unhinged ChatGPT requests (You won’t believe #1)

You might be reading this and thinking “AI will never confuse me. I’m too smart”. 

Well, think again. AI is getting smarter and smarter with each passing hour. 

We’re now in a world where AI can fake pretty much anything. You just never know these days. 

So, if you see something that seems unlikely or just plain impossible, dig a little bit deeper before you believe it. 

We’re now living in a time where seeing isn’t believing. 

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