Test yourself
Real or AI?
Five pictures. Which were taken with a camera, and which did a machine make?
How Real or AI? works
Every Friday at 7am UK time there is a new round of five pictures and clips. Some are real photographs or footage. Others were made by an AI tool. For each one you choose Real or AI, then we show you the answer straight away, with the clues that were there to be spotted and the evidence that settles it.
We only use an item when we can prove where it came from: the photographer’s original upload, the maker’s own word, an official record or a published fact-check. How a picture looks is never the reason for an answer, and neither are AI detector tools, which are wrong too often. Some items went viral this week; others are matched pairs, a real photograph beside an AI picture of the same kind of subject that we made ourselves, so you can compare like with like.
Every answer has its own page with the full evidence. Read how we check, or learn the habits that work every time in our guides: start with where it came from, then look for clues.