How to Detect AI Images in 2023: An Extensive Guide

Since the tools have become readily available, their use and abuse have increased. Some are used for their work and other purposes, others to malign others in the name of deep fakes and fake edits. It has become impossible to control and detect these activities. Detecting an AI-generated image takes a lot of effort. Let’s take a look at how to detect AI images.

What Are AI-Generated Images?

Images generated with an AI tool prompt or edited with AI tool prompts are referred to as AI-generated images. The tools have been actively updated to make their generations look as natural as possible. When someone manipulates an image using AI tools, it looks real, and it’s hard to tell if it’s real or fake. Deepfake technology has become a threat with these AI tools, jeopardizing privacy and causing self-harm to victims. These tools create realistic images from our inputs. Although some freely available tools pay attention to what kind of prompts the system accepts, the paid tools work on the whims of the subscriber and generate images based on the prompts.

Threats Associated With AI-Generated Images

AI-generated images pose a major threat to ordinary people if they are used for abuse. Some of the threats associated with AI-generated imagery are:

• Deepfakes: We live in the age of social media, where everything about our lives is available on the internet, thanks to our posts and uploads on social media. Personal images that we share on social media can be used to create images that compromise the image of society in the form of deepfakes. For example, faces from the images we upload can be used to create fake nude images. Well-known celebrities around the world are victims of fakes, and the advent of freely available AI tools has taken the problem to an extreme level with their ability to create realistic images.
• Misinformation: Misinformation is a major threat that has been around since social media took over our lives. The misinformation that used to be spread only in the form of texts is now being spread with the help of AI-generated images. AI tools can create realistic images of topics you want to spread misinformation about. If you share these images on social media with a catchy caption, they go viral within hours before anyone recognizes or verifies them as fake.
• Fake identity: Cybercrime using fake identities is widespread. Using AI tools, you can create images that look like a real person to create fake social media accounts. Social media accounts can be used to make friends, build an image, and scam them when the time is right. The capabilities of AI tools are enough to create convincing images to run social media accounts and create a new identity from scratch. With the improved tools, it is impossible to distinguish a real person from an AI-generated person.
• Scams and attempted fraud: Fraudsters use AI tools to promote dubious products and increase sales. All they need to do is create AI images of their products and associate them with a celebrity. Launching advertising campaigns with fake images is nothing new. But AI tools have taken this to a new level. AI-generated images are even being used to raise funds worldwide. The bad guys simply create images of a burning problem in the world and use these images to ask for donations on social media.

How to Detect AI Images

Detecting AI images is not a simple process. It requires a lot of inspection and the use of tools. You can use the following methods to detect AI images.

Reverse Image Search

If you have found a viral image and doubt its authenticity, you can prove its nature with a reverse image search. You can use Google or other free online tools to perform a reverse image search. If the image is genuine, you will find a lot of similar images. If the image is fake and generated by artificial intelligence, you won’t find any similar images other than this one. Even if someone downloaded the image and uploaded it to another website, the images will match it, but you won’t find any images taken from a different angle or point of view. If you only have one image, that can be a real red flag if you doubt the authenticity of an image.

Distortions

Even though AI tools can create realistic images, they inevitably make some mistakes that you can notice when you observe the images. If an image contains multiple creatures, look at the eyes of the people in the background. If they appear distorted or have some problems, there is a possibility that the images have been generated. The colors they produce or the details they produce on each image give us a clue about the AI generation. Even if the AI tools carefully create the subjects in the foreground, they give many clues in the background. A keen and observant eye can pick this out. For example, in the above image, you can see the noses of the subjects distorted. The leaves that form the canopy look unnatural, along with the fields that grow beside the road.

Watermarks

When some tools like DALL-E or Bing AI use AI to generate AI images, they watermark each image. The watermark that the tool applies to the images provides information about which tool was used to generate an image. The colors of the watermark may not be visible if we look at the image with a little indulgence. We need to look at the bottom part of each image to find the watermark and detect the AI image.

Smooth Texture

Images generated using AI tools have smooth textures on their faces. They have no blemishes or spots on their faces or skin. They don’t look as sharp as real photos. AI images look just as smooth as plastic or heavily edited photos that we can naturally point out on social media. AI images have a unique smooth texture on the subjects with colors that don’t look real. As mentioned before, you need a keen eye for detail to find the devil. For example, in the above image (generated by Bing AI), you can see very smooth foreheads without any blemishes or wrinkles. The cheeks of the subjects look patterned in the same way, which is too unreal for the real world. The watermelon in the image looks raw, and the plate is distorted at the edges. The sand under the foot of that kid looks unreal. These are some details you can look for to know if an image is AI-generated or not.

AI Image Detector tools

There are not only tools to create images from text but also to detect AI images online. All you have to do is upload the image or paste the link into tools like Hugging Face, AI or Not, Is it AI, Detecting AI, etc. They will find the source of the image and show you the result, whether the image is AI-generated or not. You need to check the same image with multiple tools to get a clear picture of its authenticity. They can sometimes be wrong, but it’s worth trying them out if an image seems too realistic for AI generation.

Spot AI-generated Photos Easily

Spotting AI-generated photos requires a high degree of observation. We have to observe the entire image from top to bottom and from the background to the foreground. Observation tells us the nature of the image. If an image is too realistic, you can use AI image detector tools to determine its authenticity.

FAQs on Detecting AI Images

1. Is there a way to detect AI?

Yes, there are many ways to detect AI-generated images or content. AI tools follow the pattern of the information they have been trained on. It takes a lot of observation to detect AI-generated content. We can even use AI content recognition tools to detect it.

2. Can Google detect AI-generated images?

Yes, Google can easily detect AI-generated images. Google has Google Vision, SynthID, and many other internal algorithms to detect AI-generated images. Google has also specified that creators must indicate whether images or videos are AI-generated or not.

3. Do AI detectors really work?

Yes, the AI detectors can really work because they are trained and updated with the new rules. No matter how much better the AI tools are, they can detect them.

4. How do you tell if an image is AI-generated art?

To recognize if an image is AI art, look at the details of the image, such as the eyes, the hands, the background, the skin texture, the clothes, the buttons on the shirts, the fingers, etc. Observe everything about the picture and you will find many clues as to whether it is AI art or not.

5. Can AI create fake images?

AI tools are very capable of creating fake images. They are used for deep fakes, fake profiles, and many other illegal activities intended to harm others. The responsible use of AI tools makes the world a better place for all of us.