CNET: “On Friday, a photo that purported to show two British naval aircraft carriers dwarfing a much smaller French naval ship made the rounds on social media. But you can’t always believe your eyes online.  Photos are easy to duplicate and then use in misleading ways. Scammers can lift a social media profile photo, for example, and use it to give a fake account a sheen of authenticity. Similarly, news photos can be grabbed from coverage of one event and pasted into stories about another event, misleading readers about what’s happening. In the case of the photo of the aircraft carriers, a reverse image search revealed the tiny vessel had been added digitally, Snopes found. A reverse image search can help you spot misleading photos by identifying their origin. If you’re in doubt, this search engine tool will help you spot scams, debunk false news, and discover people using your images without your permission. Reverse image searches rely on either Google’s Images or Lens service. Either will provide a list of websites displaying the photo or image, as well as a link and description.  Both services can also give you a list of visually similar images that might provide images shot from different angles. The list might also show the same picture with an original caption or from an earlier news story. That information is often used by fact-checkers, who’ve been using the tools to verify whether images from the war in Ukraine are current and shared in the right context. These tools are so powerful that scammers are turning to high-tech methods to end-run reverse image searches. AI-generated profile pictures have become popular with dishonest groups that rely on bogus social media accounts, like the scheme researchers identified on LinkedIn that aimed to generate sales leads with a raft of fake profiles. Reverse image searching an AI-generated photo won’t lead you to a real person, so they’re harder to identify as fake. But the use of AI-generated photos is currently fairly limited…”