Can you tell a real photo from AI in 60 seconds?
Can you tell which images are AI-generated?
Reality Check is a fast-paced browser game that challenges your ability to distinguish real photos from AI-generated images. You get 60 seconds, with up to 10 seconds per image, and can swipe or use keyboard shortcuts to guess. Correct answers earn points, and streaks boost your score, but wrong answers or timeouts reset your streak. It's a quick test of instinct and perception.
Trust your eyes. PUT YOUR INSTINCTS TO THE TEST
- Jowsey
I hadn't been exposed to the new GPT-Image-2.5 model before this, so didn't have any "tells" to go off of, and found it almost impossible to begin with, but it seems the brain is pretty good at adapting for visual stuff! After 2 rounds, I was able to build up a 16-image combo, answering most within a second or two.
I think the "tell" I ended up with is that almost all of the AI images tend to center around a very obvious main "subject" (a flower, a bike, a wrench, etc) – presumably an inherent artefact of generating from a prompt – with everything else around the subject having a very strange depth to it. The depth, focus, and bokeh around the main subject just never look quite right. If you look at an image and find it has a very strong central subject with a little too much depth separation than expected, there's a good chance it's AI.
I recognise that this method of finding a consistent "tell" will probably not hold for future models, unfortunately. Everything else looks almost perfect at this point.
- variety8675
I realized this is only somewhat difficult because of the 10s timer. Most people probably don’t spend more than 10s looking at a picture on social media, excellent project.
- charlie90
Highest I got was 26 in a row. AI seems to love generating "close up" images of a subject. Its like every image has to have an obvious subject (that was in the prompt), and it struggles to make scenes without a clear subject and more chaotic vibe. I notice this a lot with these "AI movies", every single camera shot has an obvious subject that makes them unbearable to watch, they can't just chill out and have a messy scene.
- SmasherEpilepti
> 60 seconds to find out.
> 90s round, 10s per image
> Play 60 seconds
This is confusing. What does "90s round" mean if it's a 60 second game? Is it about the 1990s?
- fwlr
Every generation prompt has this suffixed:
The scene should feel incidentally noticed during daily life, not arranged for an advertisement. Natural perspective and subtle everyday wear. No cinematic grading, stock-photo staging, deliberate blur, artificial grain, fake low resolution, extreme background blur, exaggerated HDR or oversharpening. No collage, border, caption or added watermark.
At some point during the process of building up this collection of turd-polishing techniques, the thought should’ve occurred that this is actually a lot of effort to get generations confused for reality. But I suspect this process was being carried out by something that couldn’t have an original thought.