How to Geek: AI photos are getting better, but there are still ways to tell if you’re looking at the real thing — most of the time. An AI-generated photograph is any image that has been produced or manipulated with synthetic content using so-called artificial intelligence (AI) software based on machine learning. As the images cranked out by AI image generators like DALL-E 2, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion get more realistic, some have experimented with creating fake photographs. Depending on the quality of the AI program being used, they can be good enough to fool people — even if you’re looking closely. Messing with AI to create fantastical images can be fun, and even help brainstorm ideas, but it has raised concerns over digital rights, privacy, and copyright. If someone uses an AI likeness of someone without their consent that depicts them in an intentionally humiliating light, for example, that’s a huge problem. So how do we know if an image is real or churned out by AI?”