Julian Assange has been in a detention center not far from London since 2019. Press freedom groups have repeatedly criticized his detention. In the context of this situation, a suspected image of the obviously weakened founder of Wikileaks has been circulating on social media since the end of March 2023. This is the current picture

Screenshot: Julian Assange weakened in prison?
Screenshot: Julian Assange weakened in prison?

Many users shared this image on Facebook, Twitter and Telegram, which shows a man who looks similar to Julian Assange. They have described it, among other things, as “Julian Assange’s latest picture.”

Once again an AI image

You can see the watermark “photo property of 'E'” on the image. As the AFP fact checkers found out, the Twitter account “The Errant Friend”, which published this picture on March 30, 2023, is hidden behind it.

The Twitter account constantly posts AI-generated images of well-known people. On March 17, 2023, the user shared the artificially created image of Julian Assange sitting in a cell with the identical watermark with the caption "Photo property of 'E'".

“The Errant Friend” clarified that he created the image, which was shared on social media, and confirmed this to various news sources, including the US news agency AP, the German newspaper Bild and the fact-checking team of television channel TF1.

AFP fact-checkers contacted “The Errant Friend” via his Twitter account, which in turn confirmed on April 5, 2023 that he was the creator of the image.

He introduced himself as a “former lead developer of AssangeDAO [a project supporting the release of the WikiLeaks founder] and other Assange-related projects” and said that he created the image using “version 5 of MidJourney, an AI image generator.” and added a watermark “to show people where the image came from.”


> Continue to the detailed fact check at AFP


Note: How do you recognize AI-generated images?

It is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish AI-generated images from real photos as they become better and more realistic. However, there are some characteristics that may indicate an AI-generated image:

  1. Unnatural textures: AI-generated images may have unnatural or repeating textures that are atypical in real photos.
  2. Inconsistent Shadows: Shadows and lights may be inconsistent or unrealistic in AI-generated images.
  3. Lack of symmetry: For images of symmetrical objects (e.g. faces or buildings), AI-generated images may show asymmetries that do not exist in reality.
  4. Distorted or Blurred Areas: AI-generated images may have blurring, distortion, or out-of-focus areas in places.
  5. Unnatural colors: Colors can appear unnatural or inconsistent in AI-generated images.
  6. Anomalies in Backgrounds: Backgrounds may contain strange patterns, repeating textures, or unusual elements.
  7. Missing or inconsistent details: Details in AI-generated images may be missing or inconsistent, such as the number of fingers on a hand or the placement of facial features.
  8. Conflicting perspectives: AI-generated images may contain conflicting perspectives or incorrect spatial relationships between objects.

Related to the topic:
5 tips for recognizing AI-generated images
Arrest of Donald Trump that never happened
Artificially generated images and texts: disinformation, hate speech and the future of the Internet


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Notes:
1) This content reflects the current state of affairs at the time of publication. The reproduction of individual images, screenshots, embeds or video sequences serves to discuss the topic. 2) Individual contributions were created through the use of machine assistance and were carefully checked by the Mimikama editorial team before publication. ( Reason )