Saturday Strip

Spotting Fakes

I saw this beautiful oil painting of Trump playing 5D chess and I want to give my regards to the artist. Of course in this case the image was almost certainly AI generated, so I suppose I will give my regards to whoever the human was who put in the series of prompts necessary to generate this image.

Why do I think the above image is AI generated rather than being a painting? I’ll give a list of the errors I saw at the end of this article. In the meantime do you see anything off in the image above? I’m sure I missed a few things.

Google apparently unveiled its new AI tools that developers can use to make realistic video clips, paintings, movies, songs, comedy sketches and the like. As an artist, occassional singer and writer I sometimes try out these systems. Usually I grow bored with them quickly. I don’t, for example, use AI tools to write anything on this substack unless I have specifically highlighted it as such (usually this is done to show how the system lies). Pictures of say the beach or me or family members are taken on my phone or laptop without any editing done. My YouTube (on the rare occasions that I bother) video uploads are likewise as is unaltered clips. But I often share other people’s memes that are AI generated, which for me usually has the best comedic effect when you can tell it’s fake.

This may have started as a real picture of a shampoo bottle though obviously the label was changed. I love the 5 extra vitamins:

I suspect that this image is a real photograph. The birthday candles are melted down in ways that seem appropriate for someone giving a gag cake to their 34 year old friend Clint. The frosting job is also very unprofessional as expected. Clint Eastwood might not be amused:

There’s usually incongruences in AI images. Or perhaps this lady is just posing for the camera a la Kristi Noem with no firearms or weapons handling training. Really though her hands and the gun barrel make no sense:

This image is definitely AI and is obviously taking a jab at the fat black women bronze statues that are being erected in many places. I am sure it’s meant to be grotesque but look at those hands and feet!

This looks like human ingenuity at work and actual before and after pictures:

I’d say a lot of people don’t mind the potential loss of livelihoods of scriptwriters, actors, singers, stuntmen et al in Hollywood over AI tools, considering how fake and gay most of the movies have been recently anyways. Editor’s note: they misspelled franchise:

This sounds like something I could see a judge doing:

I’ve always considered it quite the paradox that the AI is simultaneously becoming conscious, sentient, smarter than humans et cetera yet it still can’t figure out how to select all squares with traffic lights or read numbers and letters that are slightly swirled and unven, even though AI generated the security screen:

Regarding the image of Trump at the beginning of this post, that is the strangest game of chess I have ever seen. There seems to be six squares going in one direction and nine in the other and a few seem to swirl together. There are no pawns on the board (technically possible) three black rooks (technically possible) including two on the same square (no) and two black kings (definitely no). Two black bishops are on the same colored square (I guess possible through changing a pawn into a bishop). The white pieces look like they came from an entirely different chess set and what kind of chess piece is that weird white chipset Trump has in his hand? If he’s playing to checkmate against a team with two kings on the board, he will lose.

Trump’s left knuckle has five joints so presumably he has six fingers. The spire at the top of the building (what building is that supposed to be? The Federal Reserve maybe?) is floating in air and the people in the background look very odd. That’s all I have come up with. Can you spot anything else?

The danger inherent in this is not that AI generated images and photos are that hard to spot but that many people believe what they see without questioning it. Usually in AI generated videos there are continuity issues, plot holes in the storyline and what I call the camera man problem: why is somebody or something taking a video of this event? Videos taken from camera feeds often seem at near perfect angles to hit or miss on something important. Perhaps the person leaking the exclusive photos seems to have advanced knowledge of what was going to happen.

Of course in order to make all of these videos, pictures, songs, scientific papers, books and everything else the AI is harvesting from real human accomplishments from people who are often given no credit and receive no royalties. All those AI prompts are no doubt stored and analyzed so they can spot dissident trends and figure out ways to quash or misdirect rebellions. These are all compelling issues in population management.

Is Trump playing 5D chess? Or is he just a well trained reality TV star? What do you think?

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