AI vs. Real. How to Spot AI-Generated Images

by Lina Thorne • Updated 8/12/2025 · Posted in Photography

We live in a world where you can feed a simple text prompt to a generator like Midjourney, DALL‑E, Stable Diffusion, or Adobe Firefly, and it’ll conjure up a rather realistic-looking image of a place, an event, and people that never existed. In fact, AI models are being constantly improved, and as a result, it’s getting more and more difficult to distinguish real from fake.

Undoubtedly, these AI tools allow us to push the limits of creativity further. But they can be used for malicious purposes. AI-generated images can be used not only for memes and advertising, but also for spreading fake news, manipulating public opinion, stealing identities, and scamming people. So, being able to identify AI-generated content is a critical media literacy skill that can help fight against deepfakes and misinformation.

In this comprehensive article, we’ll explore:

Why detecting AI images matters
Telltale signs that an image is AI-generated
Helpful tools to identify synthetic content.

Why It’s Important to Spot AI-Generated Images

Here are the key reasons why knowing how to spot AI-generated content is crucial these days:

Misinformation and Fake News. Thanks to social media, something can get viral within just a couple of hours. The problem is that AI-generated images can easily be used to fake real-world events. They have already been used in fake news articles, political manipulation, and conspiracy theories. For example, viral images of Donald Trump being arrested have fooled thousands before being debunked.
Scams and Identity Theft. Scammers use synthetic images of celebrities to promote false products. AI-generated faces can be used to create fake social media profiles for romance scams, catfishing, and impersonation. For instance, a Hong Kong finance worker transferred $25 million to scammers after a deepfake CFO ordered it via video call.
Artistic and Legal Integrity. AI can mimic different styles of art or photography. So, it’s perfectly possible to generate an AI-image that looks like a particular artist’s work. And then this AI-generated image can be passed off as original work, creating ethical dilemmas and copyright confusion. More to that, it has been proven that some AI models are trained on copyrighted works without consent. For instance, Getty Images sued Stability AI for scraping millions of copyrighted photos to train Stable Diffusion.
Breach of Trust. Since we see realistic-looking fakes so often, eventually, we’ll start to doubt everything, even real photos. If anything can be fake, what can we trust? This can also create the “liar’s dividend” – it’ll be possible for liars to say that a real piece of information is actually fake. And we’ll believe them. Additionally, reputable news outlets can accidentally spread AI-generated images and as a result, damage their credibility.

How to Identify AI-Generated Images

When you’re trying to spot an AI-generated image, don’t look at the image as a whole. Zoom in, instead. The devil is, indeed, in the details. Because all the inaccuracies and oddities of AI-generated images are usually hidden in the details. The closer you look, the more likely you are to spot something weird.

Here’s what to look for:

Anatomical Inaccuracies and Facial Oddities

AI still struggles with the human body and how it works.

Hands and Fingers. This is one of AI’s major flaws that still isn’t entirely fixed. AI often messes up hands. So, look for too many or too few fingers. Sometimes fingers might get melted together, or their position might look too unnatural.
Eyes and Teeth. The second biggest giveaway is the eyes. They might look too glassy or shiny, misaligned, or strangely asymmetrical. Teeth can get merged into a single white blob with no clear separation or, on the contrary, they can be spaced in a weird way.
Ears and Earrings. AI often generates mismatched earrings, deformed ears, or missing ear shadows.
Necks and Limbs. A neck might be too long or merged awkwardly with the shoulders. Limbs can appear twisted unnaturally or glued together.
Crowd Scenes and Group Photos. Look for hands, feet, and faces in large groups. It’s difficult for AI to correctly depict overlapping objects, especially people.

For instance, the right hand of a woman in an AI-generated photo might have six fingers, and the necklace may blend into her neck.

Unrealistic Lighting

AI often lacks real-world logic when it comes to how light behaves.

Inconsistent Shadows. The direction of the shadows might not correspond with the position of the light source. One object might cast a shadow, while another might be shadow-less, even though there definitely should be a shadow.
No Reflections or Glare. The reflections in glasses and mirrors don’t usually look right. You might see a person wearing glasses, but no reflection in the lenses.

In addition to all this, keep in mind that natural lighting is always a bit chaotic. In AI images, it tends to look smooth, clean, and uniform. In other words, too perfect to be true.

Hair, Textures, and Fabric Issues

Fine textures and clean separation can also be quite tricky for AI to get right.

Odd-Looking Hair. Hair might blend into the forehead or shoulders without clear separation. Stray strands can look either too uniform and smooth or, on the contrary, too chaotic.
Lack of Skin Texture. People in AI images usually have shiny, plasticky, or airbrushed skin with no pores, wrinkles, or blemishes. If something looks too flawless and like a digital model rather than a real person, you’re probably looking at a synthetic image.
Clothing that Doesn’t Make Sense. Look for buttons that don’t line up, collars that fade into the neck, or patterns that don’t match on both sides of a jacket.

Generally speaking, there might not be a clean separation between objects. A person’s shoulder might blend into a tree or chair. A belt might magically disappear into the pants fabric.

Pattern Errors and Artifacts

Depicting repeating patterns and perspective logic isn’t AI’s strongest suit, either.

Warped Text and Letters. One of the biggest telltale signs that you’re looking at an AI-generated image is gibberish text in signs, packaging, books, or labels. Words make no sense or some letters get repeated. For instance, a Sony camera might be named SSSSOOONNNYYY in an AI image.
Mismatched Symmetry. Windows might not line up with floors. Tiling or brick patterns might break halfway through.
Strange Blurs or Artifacts. Parts of the image might appear overly sharp while others can be blurry for no reason. This often happens near the edges or transitions between textures.
Objects That Don’t Exist. AI-generated rooms and architecture often feature Escher’s staircases, floating furniture, or abstract patterns that look nonsensical.

Check for Watermarks

Some AI tools automatically add watermarks to images created on their platforms. For instance, images generated in DALL·E have an invisible watermark added to metadata and a visible symbol in the top left corner of each image. Additionally, some companies add the words “Generated with AI” to their AI-generated content.

Trust Your Gut

Don’t be afraid to rely on your instincts. If something doesn’t feel right, it probably isn’t.

It’s worth pointing out a couple of things. First, since AI models keep evolving and improving, it’s possible that some of the glitches and issues described above will be fixed. For instance, the finger issue has already been fixed in some models to a certain extent, meaning that fingers might still look a bit odd, but the number of them is correct. This means that some of the clues might not be relevant anymore.

Second, when an image comes straight out of an AI image generator, it might look quite unrealistic. Thus, it’s not that hard to spot it. But what if a human edits it to make it look more real? For instance, eyes in AI images might lack details, but it’s possible to paint them in manually using Adobe Photoshop. Skin texture in AI images might look too smooth and poreless, but you can use Magnific, which is also an AI tool, to upscale your image and add in the right texture to the skin. As a result, after all the post-processing, it’ll be nearly impossible to tell that it’s, in fact, an AI-generated image.

What Tools Can Help You Spot AI Images

If your instincts are telling you that an image is AI-generated, you can do some further digging to check if you’re right.

First of all, you can try to trace the source. This is quite similar to finding out if your photo was stolen. Check comments or descriptions that might point to who uploaded the image originally. Use tools like Google Reverse Image Search, or TinEye to find earlier versions of the image online. This often leads to the image’s source or reveals whether it has been altered or generated artificially.

Second, this may come as a surprise, but there are also AI Image Detectors that can be of use to you:

Hive AI Detector – Analyzes images for signs of an AI-generated image.
Illuminarty.ai – Checks for AI, deepfakes, and editing
Sensity AI.ai and Deepware Scanner.ai – Specialize in deepfake detection

Third, you can analyze the metadata of an image and look for certain digital fingerprints. For instance, use ExifTool to view all the metadata hidden in the image that you suspect is AI-generated. Look for:

Camera model. If an image is synthetic, there will be no info.
Creation software. You might see “Stable Diffusion”. There might also be some unusual sources.

NOTE! Keep in mind that at the moment, you cannot rely solely on metadata because it’s quite easy to edit or even completely get rid of it. For instance, if you upload an image to Instagram, all the metadata will be removed – no matter if it’s a real photo or an AI-generated one. In 2025, Adobe has introduced Content Credentials that are supposed to be more durable – and not that easy to remove - type of metadata. They’re kind of like a digital “nutrition label”. But there are some limitations. You can add Content Credentials using Adobe’s tools, and they can be viewed only on websites that support them.

The Future of AI Image Detection

Since it’s getting harder to distinguish AI-generated images from real photos, the need to create foolproof ways to spot synthetic images is only growing. Governments, tech giants, developers, and researchers are currently working on advanced solutions to combat deepfakes, disinformation, and scams.

AI Watermarking. Google’s SynthID already embeds invisible watermarks in images generated by Imagen that can be detected with special algorithms. Hopefully, cross-platform AI watermarks will be created in the future. Moreover, the EU’s AI Act requires AI-generated content to be labeled, while the U.S. is pushing for “AI disclosure” laws, forcing platforms to flag synthetic media.
Blockchain & Cryptographic Verification. Companies like Canon and Nikon are testing “trusted image” certificates stored on blockchain. Every photo taken on a verified device gets a tamper-proof digital signature. Project Origin (Microsoft/BBC) tracks media history from creation to publication. Truepic uses blockchain to verify photos weren’t AI-edited.
Crowdsourced & Decentralized Detection. NewsGuard and Logically use human moderators paired with AI to debunk viral fakes. UNESCO’s Media Literacy Initiatives teach schools how to spot AI manipulation. On Reddit’s r/StableDiffusion, users tag AI art to avoid deception.
“Adversarial Attacks” Against AI Generators. Researchers are developing “noise injections” that subtly corrupt AI outputs. Nightshade (University of Chicago) poisons training data to break future AI models.

Conclusion

While AI models are getting better at producing images that look incredibly realistic, there are still things that they struggle to get right. For instance, too many fingers, objects blending into each other even though they shouldn’t, pattern inconsistencies, and unrealistic lighting. Learn to spot the red flags.

Additionally, you can make use of some helpful tools to prove that what you’re looking at is a piece of synthetic content. That’s how you can protect yourself from digital deception. In a world where seeing is no longer believing, being skeptical, informed, and observant is your best defense.