Pope Francis Balenciaga

2023

Date: 25 March 2023 · Place: Reddit r/midjourney, generated in Chicago · Figures: Pablo Xavier, construction worker and creator · Midjourney v5 · Pope Francis, subject · Tags: AI, Drip, Synthetic 01. The Drip Pope Pablo Xavier, a 31-year-old construction worker from Chicago tripping on mushrooms, generates Midjourney v5 images of Pope Francis in an oversized white Balenciaga puffer jacket on 25 March 2023. He posts them to r/midjourney with no particular intent. The images cross to Twitter and Instagram within hours. Chrissy Teigen tweets 'i thought the pope's puffer jacket was real and didnt give it a second thought. no way am I surviving the future of technology.' The Drip Pope is the first AI image to make the average non-technical user genuinely uncertain about photographic reality. 02. The Turing Test Falls Pablo Xavier is doxxed by Buzzfeed News within a week. The image is more widely shared than any real photograph of Pope Francis in his lifetime. Vatican observers note that the actual Pope's style is roughly that of the AI image, which is part of why the deception works. Image synthesis passes the lay-person Turing test on 25 March 2023. Sources • Buzzfeed News, 'The Pope Balenciaga Image Was Made by a Construction Worker on Shrooms' (28 March 2023) • Pablo Xavier, original r/midjourney post (Reddit, 25 March 2023) • The Verge, 'How a Pope Wearing Balenciaga Tricked the Internet' (27 March 2023)