Are you looking at an AI-generated image?

But there is a way.

They often have bizarre visual distortions which you could train yourself to spot.

A woman looking at a piece of art.

Look for a Watermark

Another important clue for identifying an AI-generated image is a watermark.

Can you spot the watermark in the image above?

So long as you “don’t mislead others about the nature of the work”.

Screenshot of an AI generated image posted on Imgur showing a tree-dragon in the clouds

Outside of this,OpenAI’s guidelinespermit you to remove the watermark.

Extra fingers are a sure giveaway, but there’s also something else going on.

TheAI or Not web toollets you drop in an image and quickly verify if it was generated using AI.

Screenshot from Imgur of the authors comments detailing the AI prompt used to create the image.

Take it with a grain of salt, however, as the results are not foolproof.

In our tests, it did do a better job than previous tools of its kind.

But it also produced plenty of wrong analysis, making it not much better than a guess.

Screenshot of a cat playing in the field created using Dall-E

It’s worth keeping an eye out for developments.

Slowly but surely progress is being made.

At that point, you won’t be able to rely on visual anomalies to tell an image apart.

The corner of an image showing the Dall-E watermark

Screenshot of an image of dogs around a table created using Dall-E

A close up of an AI-generated image showing weird distortions in the dog’s faces

An AI-genearted picture of a guy with glasses that merge into the skin

AI Images of People Shaking Hands on DALL-E

Three AI-generated images of human faces, each showing visual distortions common to AI

Screenshot of Optic AI or Not website detecting an AI image