Eliot Higgins Profile picture
Founder and creative director of @Bellingcat and director of Bellingcat Productions BV. Author of We Are Bellingcat. Tonal Whiplash Zone.

Mar 16, 2023, 15 tweets

Playing around with #midjourneyv5 I decided to see if it could create realistic news images, so here's the entirely fictional Ukrainian peace talks between France, the US, Russia and Ukraine:

It struggles a bit with Zelenskyy, but overall it does a pretty good job of creating entirely fictional images, and I can only assume this will get better. You have to wonder what sort of fake news could be created with #midjourneyv5

Here's photos from Vladimir Putin's entirely made up war crimes trial, via #midjourneyv5

Donald Trump's entirely fictional perp walk. I do appreciate that #midjourneyv5 has got the tie length just perfect for Trump.

I redid "Donald Trump perp walk" and added "news footage" on the end that gave it an interest effect that makes it look like it's a screenshot from a video, hides the fact it's fabricated.

Someone asked for "Belarusian 2020 protests", what's interesting here is #midjourneyv5 put covid masks on nearly everyone.

Here's a previously unreleased image from the Tory leadership contest, via #midjourneyv5

It doesn't work well all the time, especially with less well-known individuals, like in this image of Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump having a fight. This was the best Tucker it could generate.

Paul Hollywood and Mary Berry fighting in the Bake Off tent is also not so convincing, but still good.

Tom Cruise vs Harry Hill gives a good impression of Midjourney's fame gap.

You can combine two famous people effectively, here's Tom Cruise as Donald Trump in the role of a lifetime.

It's not just people #midjourneyv5 can fake, imagine if pictures like this were spread across Ukrainian and Russian Telegram channels in a coordinated campaign claiming a nuclear weapon had been used in Ukraine

Keep in mind these examples were mostly all my first attempts at these images, so someone who actually spent time on this could select the most convincing, flaw free images. Anyway, here's some non-existent kittens to make you feel better.

Just as a final, final note, here's how I describe the issues with handling this sort of thing in terms of evidence vs information:
vice.com/en/article/3ak…

Ruh roh

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