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AN IMAGE APPEARING to show Pope Francis in bed wearing a respirator mask is not a real photograph, it was made using generative artificial intelligence.
The Pope was admitted to Rome’s Gemelli Hospital on Friday, 14 February, following a bout of bronchitis, with his doctors later diagnosing bilateral pneumonia. His condition has been described as “critical”.
An image search with Google Lens shows the picture of the Pope wearing a respirator appeared online in the last few days on various social media sites, including Facebook, X, Threads and YouTube.
On Facebook, it has already been labelled as false information, having been debunked by other fact checkers.
The laws of the Catholic Church state that ”No one is permitted to use any means whatsoever in order to photograph or film the Supreme Pontiff either on his sickbed or after death, or to record his words for subsequent reproduction”.
But even without consulting the laws of the Catholic Church, a close look at the image reveals it is not authentic.
At first glance, it may appear convincing, but there are details that give it away as computer-generated.
Image-generating tools still have limitations and some of those are on show here.
The first thing to do when you come across a suspicious image like this is to have a close look at the person’s hands.
Hands are still proving to be a problem for image generating tools, and here the Pope’s thumb is faint while his fingers are poorly defined, in contrast with the detail of the face.
Then above the hand, the crucifix on the necklace bends with the material of the cassock he is wearing. The chain of the necklace also appears split and fades away on one side.
Then there is the respirator mask, which has no elastic strap to keep it attached to the face.
Finally, there is what appears to be a metal pole behind the bed. It disappears before the bedsheet, as if dropping behind the decoration on the wall. There are also some rogue pale lines to the left of the pole.
Pope Francis himself wrote about AI-generated images in his memoir, which he described as the “creation and circulation of images and voices that seem perfectly real but are false”.
An AI-generated image of Francis went viral several years ago, showing him in a white puffer coat.
“I myself have ended up as the object of one,” said Francis.
With reporting from Diarmuid Pepper
Ever wondered how disinformation spreads so rapidly – or who is behind it? Check out our FactCheck Knowledge Bank for essential reads and guides to finding good information online.
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