By now, youll have seen it.
Pope Francis walks across the frame, his focus on the mid-distance.
Hes brightly lit as though its early morning.
A silver cross hangs from his neck, dangling over his snow-white, Balenciaga-inspired puffer jacket.
Its the baller bishop, the steezy father, his holy drippiness and hes been ordained from on high.
But this is just the beginning, a marker of times to come.
Are you wearing the…
“papal puffer parka?
In some senses, its not hard to spot a computer is behind the image.
But the AI pope changed all that.
I think it goes even further than that.
Just consider the increasing surreality of the past several years.
Many older people struggle to use their phones, let alone can separate AI-generated images from truthful ones.
We are, for all intents and purposes, going further into hyperreality, a concepttermed by Jean Baudrillard.
This is a concept where the real and artificial merge, becoming indistinguishable from one another.
Its impacting everything, fromfashiontothe aesthetic of AI images themselves.
Lets put it in more concrete terms.
The historic quality of those photos further undermines our own ability to separate fact from fiction.
Something wild is happening on the Midjourney subreddit.
The influence of hyperreality doesnt just mean things being created, its influence can go the other way too.
And whats stopping politicians from claiming thats exactly what it is?
Surely no one couldve been that wrong?
It must be AI.
A generated image peddled by those who cant accept the unfettered glory of a finally free United Kingdom?
The worrying part is no one really knows.
This doesnt mean that these rules should be abandoned, simply that more needs to be done around them.
Media studies once derided as a doss subject is now more important than ever.
In this era of mainstreammisinformation, being able to analyse the passage of information is a vital skill.
This must be extended.
Another route that I believe is vital in this coming age of hyperreality is local action.
As humans, were designed to operate in small groups.
As AI spreads, its going to make getting an accurate picture of the wider world tougher.
But what we can understand is what directly surrounds us.
As the phrase goes: think global, act local.
Hell, maybe AI generators of all kinds could be used for fun and harmless activities.
And all this because someone put the pope in a drippy jacket.
