Trump arrested? Putin jailed? Fake AI images spread online
Former President Donald Trump getting gang-tackled by riot-gear-clad New York City police officers. Russian President Vladimir Putin in prison grays behind the bars of a dimly lit concrete cell.
The images have inundated Twitter and other platforms in recent days, amid news that Trump faces possible criminal charges and the International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Putin.
But neither visual is remotely real. The images — and scores of variations littering social media — were produced using increasingly sophisticated and widely accessible image generators powered by artificial intelligence.
Misinformation experts warn the images are harbingers of a new reality: waves of fake photos and videos flooding social media after major news events and further muddying fact and fiction at crucial times for society.
While the ability to manipulate photos and create fake images isn't new, AI image generator tools by Midjourney, DALL-E and others are easier to use. They can quickly generate realistic images on a mass scale with little more than a simple text prompt from users.
Some of the recent images have been driven by this month's release of a new version of Midjourney's text-to-image synthesis model, which can, among other things, now produce convincing images mimicking news agency photos.
In one widely-circulating Twitter thread, Eliot Higgins, founder of Bellingcat, a Netherlandsbased investigative journalism collective, used the latest version of the tool to conjure up scores of dramatic images of Trump's fictional arrest.
Higgins, who was also behind a set of images of Putin being arrested, put on trial and then imprisoned, says he posted the images with no ill intent.