AN IMAGE OF a woman and children living in a tent in what appears to be Dublin City has generated some anger on social media despite having clear signs that it is computer-generated.
The picture, which shows a woman and two young boys sitting in front of a tent in front of a wide road, with an imposing neo-classical building in the background, was posted to a fringe Facebook group with thousands of members.
“Ireland 2023”, a description accompanying the image reads.
“That is our own people not the unvetted men get them a place straight away” [sic] one commenter says in response to the picture, playing into anti-immigrant concerns about new arrivals being given housing ahead of Irish people.
“The Dáil will call us far-right for standings up for our own homeless and the Irish people they don’t care about our homeless as long as their guests are look after open borders,” says another.
However, there are multiple signs that the photo was generated by an artificial intelligence (AI) computer programme, as multiple platforms that detect AI-generated imagery have indicated.
“96.24% likely to be AI generated,” said IsItAI.com, while Content At Scale gave the chances of it being fake as 91%. The platform AI or Not simply concluded: “This is likely AI”.
However, computer analysis isn’t needed to know that this image is not of a real event.
The location does not match up with any real place in Dublin.
The enormous building and railings in the background have many neo-classical architectural features, characteristic of Georgian Dublin, and share similarities with the GPO, College Green, Dublin City Hall, the Customs House, and sections of Trinity College Dublin – however, it does not depict any of these.
The building in the image also has a very unusual architectural feature: a portico with five Roman columns.
Porticos are essentially giant ornate porches at entrances to buildings. They typically have an even number of columns, in accordance with classical style.
An uneven number of columns, such as in the building depicted in the photo, would have a giant column blocking the building’s entrance. However, this does not appear to be an issue in his case because, even more unusually, the portico has no entrance.
There are other strange and random details that are typical of AI-generated imagery.
The woman’s fingers are melded together, fusing each hand to the other. The children also have unusual and deformed fingers.
One of the children also appears to have a halo of light around their head, and a headless dog can be seen in the background.
While there are other features, such as blurred faces and statues, that are characteristic of AI-generated images, one more is worth mentioning in detail: the tent, which appears to jut on to the road.
The left side of the image shows that the tent is no more than two pavement stones from the edge (equating to about three-fourths of a metre, based on similar paving around College Green). However, the right side of the image shows that the tent is roughly square goes back a significant depth.
The Journal has previously debunked content including AI-generated imagery, including fraudulent ads for cryptocurrency schemes featuring a likeness of Elon Musk.
The Journal FactCheck is a signatory to the International Fact-Checking Network’s Code of Principles. You can read it here. For information on how FactCheck works, what the verdicts mean, and how you can take part, check out our Reader’s Guide here. You can read about the team of editors and reporters who work on the factchecks here.
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