Matthew sent me this qui, involving ten pairs of photos in Brittanica Education. The object is to see whether you can tell which is generated by AI and which is real. Click on the headline below to go to the quiz, which is fun to take. After you click on which photo you think is real, the explanation of why you should have known pops up.
Here is one pair of photos, but take the quiz yourself, which is quick. Matthew says “I got 10/10”, but poor PCC(E) got only 9/10. Some are more obvious than others.
Have a look and then go to the quiz. Give us your score and then beef if you wish. This is the last one:
9/10
..?
I went real quick. Fun though – yeah, they are getting better with fingers. Now it’s arm alignment.
10/10 I could still spot AI anomalies but I think it won’t be long before I can’t.
Yes, this test was from last year. It’s already much better, and will soon be indistinguishable, sadly.
Thanks for posting this. That site has excellent tips on how to spot AI. I got 9/10, but I had to spend some time on each one.
I just went with quick intuition and got 7/10. Obviously, it’s going to take more care.
I got 7 out of 10 too. You and I are tied for the worst of the bunch, at least so far.
I was 7/10 too! Mind you the Titanic fell into my lap as I’m building the Lego model of it at the moment.
7/10 for me, as well. I went fairly quickly, and for two of them (the aurora and one I can’t recall already) I looked back after seeing the answer but before reading the explanation and tells popped out. The cityscape got me solid, though.
I got 10 of 10. I think people confuse them more if they don’t pay close attention. AI versions are generally too crisp/clear/stark.
And yet one of the tell tale signs on the AI suffragette ladies was the placards were pretty unreadable.
They are unreadable because it isn’t writing. Real photos get unreadable because the focus is bad and words get blurry.
10/10
Pretty easy. I have a much harder time distinguishing AI CGI vs Human CGI. I remember doing a similar thing a few month back where you had to distinguish the two, and while I got most right, it wasn’t nearly 100%.
10/10. Didn’t just guess on any of them. However, this was evidently aimed at teachers and their young students. In two of the pairs (the Shuttle one and the aurora one), I was very familiar with the subject and instantly spotted the fake. The students probably wouldn’t have had my advantage of experience.
BTW, was anyone else reminded of the old “spot the mistake” cartoon puzzles as you pored over the images?
βPer
I was shocked that my score was 0/10, but then I realized I didn’t follow the directions and was picking the fake ones. These are pretty easy to spot, but yes, AI will “improve”. Confession: I’ve been AI-ing lots of old analog prints, and the results are, unfortunately, breathtaking.
10/10 which is really unusual for me, I usually get at least one wrong in this type of test (of course, it could be all the practise…) The giveaways for me were obvious anomalies in people and animals and ray-traced perfection for others that made them look like stills from a video game.
I seriously doubt that it will be much longer before I can’t tell though, the anomalies with people and animals are getting fewer and the images of nature just need the AI to stop generating prefection. Edit: Also that AI was rubbish at generating text, so that image was a gimme!
I got the frog wrong. I wouldn’t be studying pictures so intently ordinarily, though. I would rather be burning my brain cells on something else… Something REAL. I’m a spoilsport.
10/10, but took my time. AI screws up hands…that’s one of the biggest giveaways.
I got all ten correct. I use the current version of Photoshop and a couple other photo and video editing programs which incorporate AI, so it is easy for me to spot the flaws. Hands, feet, text and perspective are nearly always giveaways. Some of the mistakes are so glaring and hilarious, I sometimes wonder if the AI is having a laugh at us.
That was fun. I got 10/10 and some were obvious. But for some, I would not have been suspicious had I not known.
Think of where we were on this a year or two ago, when it would not even be a contest! Next year? Who knows!
Comment by Greg Mayer
9/10. Missed on the space shuttles.
GCM
Same here.
I got 9 out of 10 right and missed the Space Shuttle one. But I look at small things through a microscope and have an eye for detail. I also deal with students so my BS Detector is pretty sensitive.
What I noticed with that one, besides the space shuttle not being THE space shuttle, was that the sky was optimally illuminated. With the intensely bright rockets, a camera aperture will close down and that will dim the sky.
9/10. I thought the real Northern lights were too beautiful to be true!
Got 10/10. The picture of the aurora took me the longest to i.d. If you spent much time studying, most were easy, as the results show.
9/10. I missed on the papyrus. What was galling was that I was sorely tempted to pick the correct one; in fact, looking at the stains on its edge, I knew I should pick the correct one, but I picked the wrong one anyway, because it was nice and colorful, and my stupid brain told me: “now THAT’S an Egyptian papyrus!”, like it knew what it was looking at…
Rather easy. The second image of women standing next to each other is suspicious because two look like clones. The first image is authentic.My score was 7 out of 10.
10/10. But I think they were selected to be detectable, as long as you tried hard.
For more of a challenge, try Scott Alexander’s AI Turing test:
https://ai-art-turing-test.com/
Got 9/10. Missed the frog but figured it out thereafter. It’s not too hard once you get the idea of how to evaluate them.
You can have even more fun trying to spot the AI generated books on Amazon, these things seem to have started flooding the market since April 2025.
8/10, but the result was posted as 0/10, which simply shows that I didn’t read the instructions properly, and forgot which ones to click.
Of course, in reality, we won’t normally get a simple choice, but will see one image and have to decide. At least I’ve learned what to look out for.
10/10, but nearly chose incorrectly on a couple.
10/10!