These accidental iPhone photos aren’t quite what they seem

Redditors have discovered a new prompt that allows ChatGPT to create super realistic yet “unremarkable” photos that look like they were shot on an iPhone.

The Reddit user Pigeon57434 posted to the r/singularity subreddit, stating that users can now generate super realistic photos using GPT-4o.

“You can get ChatGPT to make extremely realistic images if you just prompt it for unremarkable amateur iPhone photos. Here are some examples,” the user said.

You can get ChatGPT to make extremely realistic images if you just prompt it for unremarkable amateur iPhone photos, here are some examples
byu/pigeon57434 insingularity

To create these kinds of images, users need to prompt ChatGPT to create an “extremely unremarkable iPhone image with no clear subject or framing,” describing the image as a “careless snapshot” like it’s almost been taken by accident.

“The photo has a touch of motion blur and is mildly overexposed from uneven sunlight. The angle is awkward, the composition nonexistent, and the overall effect is aggressively mediocre.”

When typing this into ChatGPT-4o, you get something reminiscent of the once-thriving social media app BeReal.

Cybernews created a couple of our own pictures, including a snapshot of a fictional New York City street and a selfie of a woman sitting in the Old Town of Vilnius, Lithuania.

What’s curious is that GPT-4o seems to use the same woman in each unremarkable selfie.

Interestingly, when feeding the AI-generated images into a different chatbot, specifically Claude, it said that the images weren’t created using AI.

Anthropic’s chatbot said that there are realistic features like natural lighting and imperfections that “AI-generated images typically don’t capture well.”

Redditors were seemingly in awe of this new prompt, asking the original prompt creator how to replicate these accidental images.

One user said, “That image of the woman taking a selfie is so convincing, I can actually see myself falling for some romantic scam now.”

While this image tool is great to play around with, it’s possible that artificially generated images could be used to deceive people.

I guess we really can’t trust what we see online anymore.

GPT-4o is so realistic

ChatGPT’s latest model, the GPT-4o, has made headlines for its effectiveness in creating realistic photos and recreating images in specific styles.

Users had fun messing around with Studio Ghibli-style images. The image tool was so popular that OpenAI saw record-breaking numbers of users using the model.

The model can even create realistic images of celebrities, except it won’t replicate actress Scarlett Johansson.

The chatbot can even illustrate itself in human form and seems to see itself as a basic white guy in IT.