How to spot · BACKGROUNDS

Backgrounds, shadows and physics: the parts AI neglects

An AI image tool puts most of its effort where your eye goes first. The edges and the background get less care, and the rules of the physical world are not rules it knows. So look where you were not meant to look.

Follow the lines

Pick something that should be straight or continuous and follow it across the picture: a railing, a kerb, a window frame, a row of tiles, a power line. In AI pictures these often bend, stop, split in two or come out the other side of an object at a different height.

Check the shadows and the light

• Direction: if the sun is on the left, every shadow should fall to the right. Look for one object lit from the wrong side.
• Missing shadows: people and objects that seem to float because nothing anchors them to the ground.
• Reflections: a mirror, a window or a puddle should show what is in front of it. AI often invents a reflection that matches nothing.

Look at where things meet

Where a hand touches a table, where a foot meets the floor, where hair crosses a collar, where a strap goes over a shoulder. Real objects sit on, in or behind each other in a way that makes sense. In AI pictures they often blend, as if one thing were painted into the next.

Count the repeated things

Windows on a building, legs on a table, spokes on a wheel, people in a row. Repeated objects should be regular. Look for a window that is half the size of its neighbours, a chair with three legs, or a crowd where the same face appears twice.

Ask whether the scene could work

Step back and think about it as a place. Could a person stand there? Does the door lead anywhere? Would that amount of water, fire or smoke behave like that? A picture can be flawless in every detail and still show something that could not happen.

What this cannot tell you

Wide-angle lenses bend lines, long lenses flatten distance, and editing can move a shadow. Real photographs break these rules sometimes, and the newest AI tools break them less and less. Use what you find as a reason to trace the picture to its source, which is the only check that settles it.