Realistic looking images produced with Midjourney-Ki-Ejngine

Realistic looking images produced with Midjourney-Ki-Ejngine

San Francisco, 3/25/2023

Journalist Eliot Higgins has shared fake photos showing former President Trump being arrested by police officers.

The fake images have gained traction on social media, raising concerns about the proliferation of deepfakes and misinformation online as AI image generators improve and become more accessible.

Higgins said he used the latest version of the Midjourney AI engine to generate the realistic-looking images depicting Trump’s fake arrest amid a possible indictment against the former president.

After the images went viral online, Higgins claims he was banned from the service by Midjourney. The ban has yet to be confirmed.

Tests conducted online show that Midjourney has now banned users from using text prompts containing the words „arrest“ and „Donald Trump.“

Higgins is the founder of Bellingcat, an open source investigative journalism website based in the Netherlands. He told Ars that he noticed a lot of people „who didn’t seem to be aware that Midjourney existed or what it was capable of.“

Some of his images have been viewed more than 4.5 million times on Twitter. They now include a community note flagging them as fake.

Midjourney released version 5 of its popular AI text-to-image maker last week.

Compared to previous versions, V5 is better at peeking realistic looking hands like e.g. B. the display of the appropriate number of fingers, as well as improved looking eyes and faces.