Do AI Detection Tools Work?

In 2023, a thirty-one-year-old construction worker named Pablo Xavier, whose last name has not been made public, accidentally did something groundbreaking. He opened up Midjourney, a generative AI platform that produces images from text prompts, and fed it a precise description of Pope Francis wearing a puffy coat. Then, according to an interview with BuzzFeed News, Pablo Xavier took the picture Midjourney produced and uploaded it to the internet, where it went viral. It was remarkable not only for its absurdity and irreverence but also for how wildly convincing the image was, from the fidelity with which it rendered the sheen on the pope’s jacket to the subtle reflection that his glasses cast on his cheek. It was far beyond anything the world had seen from an AI hobbyist.