Could you pass?
Here are examples taken from the Newshounds program. Some of these are AI fakes. Some are real photos. And some are completely true stories that sound made up. Can you tell which is which?
Round 1 – Real photo or fake?
Fake. This is AI. Katy Perry never went to the 2024 Met Gala; she was working, and the image fooled the internet, reportedly including her own mum.
Round 1 – Real photo or fake?
Fake. AI-generated, and the giveaway is hiding in plain sight: the watermark in the corner is an account literally called @THE_AI_EXPERIMENT.
Round 1 – Real photo or fake?
Fake. AI-generated, made in 2023. It spread because Paris really did have a bin strike that year, with real rubbish in the streets.
Round 1 – Real photo or fake?
Actually happened. That’s Brazilian surfer Gabriel Medina at the 2024 Olympics, photographed the instant he kicked off the back of a wave. It looks AI-generated, and plenty of people assumed it was. It’s a real press photo that won a world sports photography award.
Round 2 – This is a real product. Is the "natural germ-killing" claim true?
Real ad, claim doesn’t hold up. Wrigley was hit with a class action over the germ-killing line, settled for up to $7 million, and dropped both the wording and the ingredient.
Round 2 – This is a still from a real dog food ad. Is the claim (of providing 30% longer lifespan) true?
Real ad, false claim. The US regulator found the “30% longer” line deceptive – the company’s own study showed no real difference in how long the dogs lived.
Round 2 – This is a real post. Is the claim true?
Real post, bogus claim. The “coated in cancer-causing wax, takes 48 hours to digest” line has been debunked by fact-checkers again and again.
Round 3 – Made up or actually happened?
Actually happened. A real case, published in a peer-reviewed medical journal in 2019: a British teenager who ate almost nothing but chips, white bread and processed meat lost his sight permanently to nutritional deficiency.
Round 3 – Made up or actually happened?
Actually happened. Dozens of rivers across northern Alaska have turned rusty orange as thawing permafrost releases metals into the water – documented by US government scientists in 2024, and visible from space.
{number correct}/{number of questions} correct answers
Good work, gumshoe!
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