In this episode, we divert our attention from socioeconomic, economic, and political concerns to a “not-so-new phenomenon” that has an impact on everyone. Now, artificial intelligence is putting on a show for us. Let enthusiasm, not fear, fill your mind as you process that.
For anyone wishing to copy the pontiff’s style, the coat is similar to the $3,550 Long CB Down Jacket for women by Balenciaga and the $3,000 Duvet Jumbo Peter Coat by Rick Owens. Both are black, but it’s conceivable that the designers—much like the car companies that create each new popemobile—might agree to certain special requests if Il Papa made them.
The picture was entirely fabricated. The image was produced by the generative AI programme Midjourney, according to the debunking website Snopes, and later appeared on the Midjourney subreddit.
I assumed the pope’s puffer jacket was genuine and didn’t think twice about it. I have no chance of surviving the technological future. Although it was kind of cool, I believe the Balenciaga Pope may be the first real mass-level AI misinformation case. However, there is no way of knowing what the future of technology holds or how much it will affect people.
This trend of slightly fanciful but convincingly realistic imagery poses a clear risk
Several people were duped by the phoney coat, which also duped many others in the same week as bogus, AI-generated photographs of police officers accosting former president Donald Trump. Yes, it is all too obvious how quickly artificial intelligence could be developed into a weapon to wreak havoc and how easily it could be used to create propaganda.
But, the Pope Coat Incident shows that AI can and will be used for other purposes that are comparable to creating hyper-realistic cartoons for creating fictitious fashion statements by pairing any particular celebrity with any particular ensemble of clothing, much like an endless number of paper dolls for producing the visual equivalent of fanfiction. The puffer-pope saga may have been one of the earliest instances of actual mass AI deception, but it was also rather low-risk.
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The realistic-looking graphics of that yet hypothetical scenario also made by Midjourney started to fill social media last week as rumours of Trump’s impending arrest circulated. Even though it was clear that most of the images were produced by AI upon closer examination, many experts viewed their appearance and widespread use as a sign of AI’s potential to purposefully deceive. Trump posted a picture of himself kneeling in prayer on his website, Truth Social, on Thursday. The picture featured dramatic lighting. It began spreading among his supporters, but it was quickly shown to be a “deepfake.” It was a “deepfake” because it featured fake parts of fake-body Trump’s and strange, uncannily realistic people in the background.
The Popecoat therefore arrived at a time when people were understandably and legitimately concerned about AI-generated images, and when those images’ realism had even increased from a few weeks earlier.
Arvind Narayanan, a professor of computer science at Princeton University who researches AI, claimed that the confusion surrounding whether the meme was real or phoney was probably the reason it gained popularity. It will be crucial for social media platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and Reddit to have better tools to immediately classify false content because a lot more people have access to this kind of technology, he said. It should go without saying that we should never again take an image’s realism for granted.
People have undoubtedly been duped by deepfakes before. Examples include a fake “drunk” Nancy Pelosi video from 2019 and a Mark Zuckerberg “announcement” about Facebook ads from the same year. The dripped-out pope, however, was developed by a 31-year-old Chicago construction worker who got the idea while high on mushrooms, and it serves as a reminder that not all AI creations are made with the intention of passing themselves off as real. (The construction worker said to BuzzFeed, “I just thought it was funny to see the pope in a funny jacket.) After all, the representation of things that aren’t necessarily genuine has a name: art.
Jamie Cohen, an assistant professor of media studies at Queens College, was one person who did not fall for the Balenciaga Pope ruse.
Not simply because the pope “would never wear” a $3,000 luxury coat, Cohen claimed that he “understood it was not real” right away.
“You can tell that the photographs are artificial intelligence. Once you’ve seen enough AI imagery, you can tell what’s real and what isn’t” said he. But he did describe the meme-like image as “wonderful”. it “fits well into the environment of individuals making fun of high style or high fashion.” “The irony is so on the surface, it’s great because he’s the pope and his specific interest as pope is looking after the poor and looking after people with less benefit.”
The AI-authored image is not that dissimilar from IRL high-fashion gimmicks, like Supreme’s 2016 $30 price for a branded brick. (On eBay, its resale value at the time ranged from $200 to $1,000.) Additionally, Cohen noted that the image has a “sweet and endearing” component. It is been asserted, “We now have the capability to take an idea and have a machine produce that concept. What’s truly horrible about that is that not everyone thinks in a tidy and cute way.
This trend of slightly fanciful but convincingly realistic imagery poses a clear risk. Even with AI’s current safety nets, Cohen claimed that humans may produce material that leads viewers to the “border of conspiracy theories” or disseminates visual “dog whistles.” (The designer of Coat Pope told BuzzFeed that the image’s popularity made him realise the impact of AI-generated images and that he favours legislation governing them.
In either case, Swaggy Pope Francis does emphasise the importance of acquiring some level of AI literacy. Cohen responded, “This is a good entryway, a good doorway for it.
In other words, there is a chance even a good chance that AI images will deceive us in harmful ways. They might trick us into doubting our moral convictions, our confidence in our leaders, and our sense of community. Yet if there’s anything important to learn from the great Balenciaga pope mirage, it’s that artificial intelligence (AI) occasionally manages to trick us just enough to please us.
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