Thread by @Amanda_Florian

Hi, I'm a tech reporter that covers China, cybersecurity, & new media. Hundreds of people are sharing this photo of Xi Jinping & Vladimir Putin as they meet at the Kremlin. The two did meet, but it's highly likely this photo was generated by an AI program. Here's why: 🧵

First of all, the genuine images and videos coming out of Moscow show the men in a different room with a different set of chairs. But that's too easy, right? Let's see what AI has to say.

I ran the photo through a few reverse-search sites, where I saw a minimum of 239 instances of the photo on sites and social platforms with origins in Hong Kong, Poland, and Ukraine.

That didn't help much because it told me lots of people were re-posting the photo, but it didn't reveal any sort of source image that the person or machine could have used to create the photo.

I then ran the image through an AI image detector created by Hugging Face, a French tech company that provides tools for machine learning and software development. According to their image detector, the photo is indeed artificial.

Of course, I ran another human-generated photo through their system as the control, and the detector passed.

Xi's hair has some irregular noise and blurriness, which is usually a good indication that an image is GAN-generated. If you look carefully, you'll also see the slightly hooded ear on Xi and some irregular bumps on Putin's ear.

All of this to say, you can't trust everything you see on the internet.

Some are probably wondering, why go through all of this trouble to verify? AI is incredible, but it can clearly be used in manipulative & harmful ways. I believe proper disclosure is needed if you're sharing these kinds of photos. Even if it's a joke or meme—disclose that (!!)