You're listening to Life Kit from NPR.

Hey everybody, it's Mary-Al.

There's this image that went viral earlier this year of the Pope,

looking honestly pretty stylish.

He was wearing this white puffy designer coat and rocking an enormous crucifix necklace outside of it.

And he looks like he's just, you know, out for his morning coffee run.

So I know Pope Francis is supposed to be like the relatable Pope,

but I regret to inform you that this image is fake.

It was created using AI, artificial intelligence software.

Shannon Bond is a correspondent at NPR.

She covers misinformation.

And she says, if you look closely, you can see the clues.

You know, one of the, the sort of classic tells that people talk a lot about is that these image generators

can really struggle with creating realistic hands.

Hands or for some reason, particularly tricky.

Also things like teeth and accessories like glasses and jewelry.

And so, you know, that was an example we saw with the image of the Pope wearing the coat.

He seemed to be holding a coffee cup in his hand, but his fingers weren't actually like holding on to the coffee cup.

And if you looked at the side of his eye glasses, it sort of disappeared into his face that there wasn't a rim.

The guy who made this image, by the way, is quoted in Buzzfeed saying,

I just thought it was funny to see the Pope been a funny jacket.

And it may seem like, okay, what's the big deal?

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