AI image generators—like Midjourney, DALL·E, and Stable Diffusion—are capable of producing stunning, lifelike visuals.

However, these images often reveal subtle clues that signal they’re synthetic rather than the product of a camera or a human hand.

Below, we’ll highlight the key points to help you identify AI-generated visuals, along with ideas for hands-on exercises to sharpen your detection skills.

1. Common Clues in AI-Generated Art

1. Strange or Missing Details

   • What to Look For: Objects may contain impossible structures—think extra limbs, off-center reflections, or inconsistent shadow directions.

   • Why It Happens: AI sometimes struggles with object permanence or realistic geometry, especially if trained on imperfect data.

2. Inconsistent Text

   • What to Look For: If there’s text or lettering (on signs, T-shirts, book covers), it might look jumbled or like nonsense letters.

   • Why It Happens: Most image generators are trained to synthesize visuals, not read or write coherent text.

3. Odd Artifacts or “Glitches”

   • What to Look For: Visual “noise,” warping at edges, distorted objects, or melted backgrounds. Eyes in portraits might be “glassy” or mismatched.

   • Why It Happens: Generative models piece together patterns from a huge data set but can blend features incorrectly.

4. Overly Smooth or Uniform Textures

   • What to Look For: Surfaces or patterns that appear too clean or “airbrushed,” without the irregularities you’d expect from real photos.

   • Why It Happens: The AI can lack the subtle texture variations found in real-life objects or human-made art.

2. Lighting, Perspective, and Scale

1. Lighting Mismatch

   • What to Look For: Shadows pointing in conflicting directions or lighting that doesn’t match the scene’s overall tone.

   • Why It Happens: AI can blend diverse images or styles in ways that defy consistent lighting logic.

2. Perspective Errors

   • What to Look For: Buildings, furniture, or landscape elements at awkward angles, or vanishing points that don’t line up.

   • Why It Happens: AI struggles when merging multiple references with different viewpoints.

3. Exaggerated Features

   • What to Look For: Human figures or objects disproportionately large or small relative to their surroundings.

   • Why It Happens: The model might fail to blend scale properly, especially if training data had varied proportions.

Practical Exercise

Activity: Create a slideshow of images (half AI-generated, half real photos or human-created art). Ask learners to vote on which are AI vs. real.

Debrief: Reveal answers and discuss which details exposed the AI.

Quick Recap

1. Be Alert: AI-generated images often contain subtle (or not-so-subtle) artifacts—extra limbs, malformed text, inconsistent shadows.

2. Use Tools: Metadata viewers, reverse image searches, and specialized detection services can provide strong clues.

3. Context & Common Sense: If an image seems too perfect, bizarre, or mismatched in details, it could be a synthetic creation.

4. Practice, Practice: Regularly comparing real photos and human-crafted art to AI-generated visuals sharpens your visual literacy and increases awareness of how AI manipulates imagery.