Over the weekend, a photo of Pope Francis looking dapper in a white puffer jacket went viral on social media. The 86-year-old seated pope appears to be suffering from some serious cataplexy. But there was just one problem: the photo wasn’t real. Created with Midjourney’s artificial intelligence technical tool.
As word spread across the internet that the image was created by artificial intelligence, many expressed their surprise. “I thought the pope’s puffer jacket was real and never thought about it again,” Chrissy Teigen chirp. “No way can I escape the future of technology.” Garbage Day newsletter writer and former BuzzFeed News correspondent Ryan Broderick invited him “The first real mass-level AI misinformation case,” it follows in the aftermath Fake photos of the arrest of Donald Trump by police in New York last week.
Now, for the first time, the image’s creator has shared the story of how he created the image that fooled the world.
Pablo Xavier, a 31-year-old construction worker from the Chicago area who declined to give his last name due to fears he would be attacked for taking the photos, said he was stumbling through dorm rooms last week when he came up with the idea for the photo.
“I try to figure out ways to make something funny because that’s what I usually try to do,” he told BuzzFeed News. “I try to do funny things or tripartite-psychedelic things. It just dawned on me: I have to do the Pope. Then it came like water: “The Pope in a fluffy Balenciaga coat, Moncler, walking the streets of Rome, Paris, things like that.”
He generated the first three images at around 2pm local time last Friday. (He first started using Midjourney after the death of one of his brothers in November. “It almost all started, just dealing with grief and taking pictures of my ex,” he said. “I fell in love with her after that.”)
When Pablo Xavier first saw the Pope’s photos, he said, “I thought they were perfect.” So he sent it to a Facebook group called AI Art Universe, and then on Reddit. He was shocked when the photos went viral. He said, “I didn’t want it to explode like that.”