A pigeon on a river wall in front of the Houses of Parliament: real or AI?

As shared

A grey pigeon standing on a stone river wall, with a bridge, a clock tower and a large Gothic building behind it.

Made with ChatGPT by Wikimedia Commons user Belbury · Public domain (CC0, PD-algorithm) · Source

AI-MADE

A machine made this.

How sure we areHigh

Based on 1 strong and 0 supporting piece of evidence.

What we found

The picture shows a pigeon standing on a river wall, with the Houses of Parliament behind it. It was not taken with a camera. A Wikimedia Commons user called Belbury made it with ChatGPT and uploaded it on 10 September 2026. The prompt typed in was simply "a picture of a London pigeon". The file page labelled it as an AI-generated image and placed it in the category for images made with GPT Image 2.5. It was shared under a public domain licence because, as the page explains, work made by an AI does not have enough human authorship to be protected by copyright. Commons later deleted the file on 8 October 2026, so we link to an archived copy of the page. A short, plain prompt was enough to get a picture this convincing, so a famous landmark in the background is no sign that a photo is real.

Key facts

Original source: Made with ChatGPT by Wikimedia Commons user Belbury
First published: Not recorded
Earlier appearances: Not recorded
The claim you saw: No caption recorded
Signs of AI: Yes. Shown below, but not what decided it

The evidence, strongest first

Strong Decides the answer

The maker says soWikimedia Commons file page, made and uploaded by user Belbury with ChatGPT, 10 September 2026 (archived copy: Commons deleted the file on 8 October 2026)↗

Supporting Points the same way

None.

Weak Shown, not relied on

How it looksThis one is very hard to tell. The pigeon is spotless and stands neatly posed in front of Big Ben, like a postcard. The bird and the far-off buildings are both quite sharp, which is unusual in a close-up photo. There are no clear mistakes, so the proof comes from the person who made it.

Detector scores are often wrong, so they never decide a verdict here.

What we couldn’t establish

Exactly how it was made, and with which prompts, beyond what the sources above say. If you know more, tell us.

Bottom line

Made by AI: the maker says so.

See the original ↗Think we’re wrong?

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