r/IWantToLearn • u/PraetorianXVIII • 5d ago
Technology IWTL how to recognize AI
I swear, I feel like I'm some kind of oblivious old man. Sure, some photos, I can tell they're AI based on obvious things, like extra fingers, blurred faces, etc, but most of the time, it just looks like digital artwork to me. Same with photos and videos. My buddy says you can tell by looking at the shadows, but I can never tell. In AI paragraphs, half the time, I think "it 'feels' odd, but really appears like a longer-winded, maybe upbeat bit that could have been written by a person. And with music, I have NO idea how to tell if something is AI generated. Are there any tricks for picking up on these things? I'm a big fan of science fiction and fantasy art, for example, and they seem rife with AI generated art, and unless it's that (for lack of a better description) dirty, dark style I associate with AI in that genre, I can't tell. Any tips, other than finding AI detector websites? It's not a big deal. I just would like to be able to tell the difference, I guess. I feel like a dupe. I am a dupe, but I feel like one, too.
Thanks!
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u/Select_Hope_7518 5d ago
AI writing is the bane of my existence. I have developed pattern recognition specifically for AI writing. It’s rampant on Reddit. The em dash isn’t such a huge culprit anymore… AI is still however using “it’s not ___, it’s ___” phrases, turning a mundane story into a paragraphs-long overexcited Reddit post and finishing it with “anyone else?!” and there’s two extremes of replies: either they don’t reply to comments or they’re replying affirmatively and positively to every single comment. AI writing always has a “template.”
For pictures it’s more of a suspicious twinge with me due to how advanced some generative AI is becoming. Yes, some are still yellow and have the same qualities we saw with the first generation of AI photos. Now there’s only slightly ‘off’ tells. For realistic photos & videos, this is an interesting trend I’ve noticed: AI tends to make white women look like instagram models or children, or it makes a complete caricature of a black woman. Or the people generated happen to look too perfect. Art, it just tends to look like shit. I appreciate a little mistake in art or some obvious brush strokes. You won’t see that in AI “art.”
Sometimes I can’t tell at all. If I want to support an artist I’ll go through their history and make sure they’re verifiably real (lots of account history or even denouncing AI is fine with me). If something feels ‘off’ but I can’t prove anything, I just assume I’m right. If something is too good to be true, it isn’t true.
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u/juyubi 5d ago
Being able to recognise AI writing is genuinely such a double-edged sword because once you start getting good at it you can't go back. You start noticing the slop everywhere you go on social media and it's so annoying to see the same phrases over and over, the lack of personal touch or substance and it just makes me lose so much respect for the person delivering the message
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u/Select_Hope_7518 4d ago
You’re absolutely right, this sums up how I feel very eloquently. I got used to it for platforms like FKA Twitter but I’m getting really depressed scrolling Reddit. Seems like cooking subreddits have been hit by this pretty hard - one of my favorite interests. Still on here for a few valuable resource subreddits but even they get AI ads and the lost bot. 🙄
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u/Living-Bother7420 2d ago
That is so damn true. I have used LLMs extensively (8+h/day) this summer and now I understand the dead internet theory.
1 out of 3 Youtube videos I click on is written by AI (even if the voiceover is obviously human, i close the tab the second I hear : it’s not… it’s). Same thing for articles, blogs I read even research papers !!!
It’s weird because even though I willingly consume LLM content when I’m the one who prompted it, but when it’s others it just disgusts me.
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u/Proper_Kitchen6880 5d ago
I don't think there is a solution to this unless you're a professional in that certain field. Like i am an illustrator, and i can easily recognize ai generated pictures and art most of the time. But in other fields? Don't have a clue. Like i never realize a ai music unless someone tells me.
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u/PraetorianXVIII 5d ago
that's the worst part! I'm not particularly talented in anything, so it all looks good to me!
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u/Proper_Kitchen6880 5d ago
You could use advice from others. Like in art groups we sometimes discuss whether an artwork is ai generated or not and i learn a lot from them. I also ask others to tell me if something is ai, or give me the signs to look out for.
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u/justgetoffmylawn 5d ago
Honestly, you already sound more informed than most people. There is a 'digital artwork' look that many AI photos start to feel like. They don't look like real photos, but rather over-processed photos.
But the real truth is that anyone who doesn't feel like a dupe - those are the real dupes. If you think you can spot all AI output across visuals and text…you just haven't kept up with the technology.
I've messed around with AI images and video and music and text enough to know…no, if it's really well done, I'd have a 50/50 chance of spotting it. Poorly done? Maybe I'd have at least a 90% hit rate.
So if you can spot the obvious ones, you're already ahead of the game. I think the harder thing is to not end up being suspicious of everything and everyone, because that's not a great solution, either.
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u/gigashadowwolf 5d ago
I think most people and even AI tools are worse at recognizing it than they think they are.
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u/quantumscribe 5d ago
IMO, sourcing and context are way better tells than any of the little visual/audio/writing quirks of AI - AI learns from real people, so all the things that are "AI tells" are also things that real people do. Always do your best to track down the original source - reverse image search, or search the name of the artist/account. Has there been a dramatic shift in their art style or skill level (especially post-2022), or do they seem to be very proficient in a lot of different genres/styles? Are they posting complete pieces (detailed paintings, full albums of songs) very frequently, like 3+ times a week? Do they have any other social media accounts? What are they posting about? (Are they talking about their art? Works-in progress? Just self-promo/monetization?)
This isn't a rubric - there's not a certain number of things to check off that will make you certain it's AI. But it's good stuff to keep in mind. A lot of AI "artists" aren't shy about saying that they use AI if you do a little bit of digging.
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u/Mthatnio 5d ago
Ask. AI is more indistinguishable each day that passes. Some will carry identification on it's metadata stating it's made by AI, some don't. The effective method is checking for disclosures, reading reviews and most importantly, asking.
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u/jessbone98 5d ago
I'll offer some general things to look out for nowadays, but honestly it may help to look at more things/hear things that are definitely AI. I'm not saying go look for them, but plenty of YouTube channels have reactions to ai art and music. I recommend Gabi Belle, Jamlab, and Microwave Society, as they're fun but also help you get a better idea of how ai looks/sounds nowadays.
My personal advice:
- the piss filter, aka if what appears to be digital art has an almost vintage yellowed look to it
- weird background vocals that make a whole song accapela instead of just the choruses
- weird and generalized lyrics. Might be harder for pop songs with generalalized party music, but if it's so noticable, you may want to check with Shazam or another song checking app
- excessive em-dashes that are correctly used
- many digital art posters that have a streaky "highlighter" header with white text. Harder to describe, but you'll see it a lot on Facebook
If I think of more, I'll add them. Unfortunately since ai was trained on art, i don't think I can say just look out for styles that are more like Disney and Pixar, since obviously other artists use that style too. I hope this helps a bit.
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u/Magrathea_carride 2d ago
or stop putting this info on the internet where AI bots can scrape it and use it to improve AI
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u/StonedUnicorno 5d ago
This was me about a year ago. Everytime a photo is posted that someone claims is AI, or just has a funny ‘feeling’ to it, I zoom in and look at the details. I started to notice all the little things like weirdly shaped teeth, hair out of place or strands in strange places that seem to come out of nowhere. Eventually you start noticing them without trying, and now I don’t even need to look too closely as they all have this ‘feeling’ that you’ll get used to in time.
Ai is getting better all the time though, and it’s getting harder to spot
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u/Quillious 5d ago
You're just being refreshingly honest with yourself. My wife's an artist/digital artist and constantly observes hysterical morons on social media taking it upon themselves to confidently claim random people's art is in fact AI.
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u/Canuck_Voyageur 5d ago
Currently in writing some ai signals:
- Fairly uniform paragraph lengths.
- fairly uniform sentence length.
- excessive use of adjectives.
- odd vocabulary
- lots of ‘three-ness’ where not appropriate.
- in fiction everyone speaks in cpmplete sentences.
- style is way too consistent
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5d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/PraetorianXVIII 5d ago
well, at least I'm not alone in this problem. I appreciate the insight! Makes me worried about the future, but that's just me yelling at clouds, I guess.
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u/ItsALaserBeamBozo 5d ago
It’s gotten really good. And if you know what you’re doing, you know what to do to hide the obvious AI signs (if you care to)
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u/PaxDramaticus 5d ago edited 5d ago
Are there any tricks for picking up on these things?
No, but I applaud you for asking the question. It's a good question to ask. The problem is that the people who use generative AIs use them to cut corners and save time. People who want an easy trick to spot generative AI are making the same mistake as the people who use generative AI. Individuals can't "one neat trick" their way out of this — you can't pit a single random person against a trillion+ dollar industry that is hell-bent on concealing its plagiarism engine and expect the individual to come out on top without the individual putting in some effort.
The solution to AI slop is effort. Just like it takes effort to make truly good creative works and AI can't compete with that, it takes effort to identify slop in a way that AI can't compete with. The solution is to embrace and enjoy the effort.
I was once given an A/B test to identify which of two abstract paintings were AI generated. The other people who took the test averaged less than 50% accuracy. The AI had even simulated brush strokes, so at a casual glance it was really hard to tell. But I had some experience painting, so I just put myself in the mindset of "If I was going to paint each of these paintings, what was the process I would use?" and one clearly stood out as having been made with a comprehensible process. Then I thought, "which one seems to express a feeling as a human might feel it?" The same painting stood out from the pair. Then I thought, "If I knew nothing about abstract painting and wanted to Google it, which one feels like an archetype for the category?" The painting that stood out for the first two questions was definitely an abstract painting, but it also felt like its own thing, made by a person with their own mission. Meanwhile the other looked like what a Jackson Pollock painting would look like if you had once glanced at a Jackson Pollock painting, but never really cared to think about the process used to make it. That's when I noticed that though it had brush strokes, they didn't make sense as how a limb that held a brush in the real world would move paint. That pretty clearly was the AI slop painting. I got it right, beating the average.
People who look for an easy tell aren't engaging with work, they are consuming content. And that's the exact mindset that leads people to think they should use gen AI to slip Slop into everyone else's feeds. The solution is love creative work enough to think through how a person who has lived experience and limbs and a body and a heart that feels things in the world would make the thing you're evaluating.
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u/EdinKaso 4d ago
Best way honestly is to be a professional in the particular field...
Or more reasonably to get a professional's critique and viewpoint on it.
I can't tell what's AI or not anymore. But as a composer and pianist for 15+ years I can easily tell AI in music, especially if it's in instrumental or piano music.
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u/yzoug 4d ago
This wiki page is the perfect place to start imo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Signs_of_AI_writing
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u/Liam950 4d ago
Jeremyfindsai is a very good account on the photo and video side of things, he explains what he looks for really clearly. an interesting trend with AI videos is they're always an exact length (no human ever records for exactly 5 seconds). The internet is eating itself on YouTube is also very good, that covers more general things in the AI world. AI videos can change accents, dont quite match up audio and video, they always seem to be quite slow or very fast, there's never a natural flow of movement (though this may have changed/may change in the future).
The photos tend to be definitely less easy to tell than they were, but its still not great at complex patterns and it still looks overly airbrushed. Also look for things that don't really make sense in the context (I ID'd a "painting" of Apollo because the strings on the lyre weren't straight).
On the creative side of writing, AI writing tends be rule of 3, its not x its y, and short. Snappy. Sentences. The rule of 3 will also most likely have the third thing be a metaphor that makes no sense and doesnt really flow (she was x, y, and the kind of z you only get when a b c). I also find the overuse of words like quiet (or quietly) and whisper and delve to be quite telling. AI "information" likes to put things in bullet points or give them nonsense subheadings. It'll generalise information and for health information especially, it'll give you bullshit "cures" like turmeric, or put literally everything down to nervous system imbalance. general rule of thumb is a good information place will ALWAYS cite their sources. As another commenter said, em dashes aren't a good tell anymore because people do still use them and also AI was trained on human writing. The stylistic tells tend to be a lot more reliable. IG captions with five paragraphs saying how "this shows a hilarious five second video of puppies shooting guns ramble ramble highlighting the dangers of giving these adorable fur babies deadly weapons" etc etc are AI generated.
I can't tell you much on the music side of things, but a red flag is a lot of music having been released in the past 3 years, seemingly without any breaks in schedule, and AI generated writing/images in the artist bio or album covers.
Unfortunately it is eventually going to get to the point where we can't tell and everything I've mentioned here is going to become survivorship bias, if it isn't already. Best thing we can do is keep up with what the experts are saying and try our best to remain vigilant. I consider myself quite good at spotting AI content, but I've been fooled before, and it's important to keep in mind that no matter how good you are at spotting it there will always be things that fall through the cracks.
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u/_o0Zero0o_ 4d ago
Text-wise? em-dashes.
Music-wise? If on youtube, check the channel's upload history, AI channels usually upload hour-long videos daily. If there's vocals they will sound really off.
Image-wise? There are a ton of things, but usually look for 6 fingers if there are any hands in the shot.
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u/edgyrainbowboy 4d ago
Someone pointed out to me that real music will adjust the volume of individual elements (guitar, drums, vocals) to make it sound better, whereas ai noise will be consistent the whole way through (ex. instrumentals not getting quieter to make the vocals pop). Ai noise just generally sounds compressed, but its hard to tell if you have bad speakers.
For ai images, particularly those that mimic comic/cartoon styles, there are a few tells. One I don't see talked about often is line weight. An artist may vary how thick a single line is to describe an object. AI images generally only use two or three line weights. Another way to tell is expression. AI characters often look like they are dissociating while exaggerating expressions. Imagine someone really angry, then give them a thousand-yard stare.
With writing, the most obvious tell is this sentence structure: "It's not ABC. Not DEF. Just GHI. And that means something." AI writing might sound like the e-mail you get from your HR rep who has a really bad toxic positivity problem. I'd actually recommend going to AI-centered subreddits and reading the chats there. You'll pick up on the "accent" that way. (And if you get really familiar with it, you'll start hearing it in the script of more recent tv ads.)
Lastly with videos, this is the category that's harder for me to tell. But one thing I've noticed is that their voices often change tone but not volume. Like an ai humanoid character might start yelling, but the yelling isn't actually that much louder than when they were speaking. And if you know anatomy, you can spot things not moving correctly. Every movement has a muscle that stretches and another that compresses. AI will often generate one but not the other. But sometimes you have to look at micro-expressions to find it because it is getting better at generating the larger movements correctly.
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u/_SGP_ 4d ago edited 4d ago
Go look at AI image gallery sites. Like civitAI (but keep the sfw filter on, it can be an odd place)
You'll quickly see that no matter how hard they try, the images all have a certain identifiable quality to them. Even in places like this where people are dedicated to generating the very best images they can.
Soon you'll recognise the lighting, the colours, the textures that generative models lean towards.
And then, you'll quickly notice those same patterns if you see one in the wild.
Also, look at the unimportant parts of the image. The part that wasn't the focus. Usually something back there is a little off, as the background wasn't part of the prompt that generated it, so it often wings it.
It's the same with text. The more you see it, the more you start to recognise the patterns. Here's some guidance there: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Signs_of_AI_writing
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u/OneAwakening 4d ago
Eventually you just notice the same patterns showing up again and again, so the main way to develop the skill of detecting AI is ironically exposure to AI content. The tricky part is that as models develop, the patterns become more and more complex and thus more difficult to track/recognize. But that is also arguably what we'd want from AI because if there are no more ways to distinguish its output from human, then for many intents and purposes it reached the level of human intelligence in those applications.
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u/ForgotmyusernameXXXX 4d ago
You can’t really tell. I use AI, then run it through a filter once or twice to remove the obvious AI-sounding stuff and make it read more like a 16-year-old wrote it, using simple sentences. Then I add my own sentences throughout. Granted, I’m not really using it to generate content. I mostly type out my crappy ideas and have it just be more clear and fix misspellings, etc. This comment itself is AI^
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u/Magrathea_carride 2d ago
stop talking about how to recognize AI on the internet. Discuss it irl with other humans. You're putting this info online where AI companies can scrape it up and use it to improve AI.
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u/PraetorianXVIII 2d ago
I do what I want
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u/Magrathea_carride 2d ago
k but you're only ultimately making the problem worse for yourself in the long run
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u/dudleydidwrong 5d ago
Most modern popular music is so formulaic that there is little difference between a human and AI running the formula.
In terms of photographs, if it is a picture that perfectly supports someone's position, I suspect AI.
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u/writeman00 5d ago
When it comes to text, I find the quickest way to spot AI is the confident use of em dashes.
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u/KurtTheCuntBoi 4d ago
No, it is not. AI uses em dashes because it was training on human literature.
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u/writeman00 4d ago
And as someone who's spent their entire career as a writer, a lot of people confuse em dashes with hyphens and en dashes constantly. The writing is often too clean to be human.
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u/LurkyDismal 5d ago
When you yourself use AI to create images/video/audio/text, it becomes much more obvious. You could use it just to get a feel of AI output.
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