Ways to tell if a picture is AI

      I'm seeing a lot of AI on my feed again. I understand there are a lot of new ARMY who may not have gotten the memo that we don't do AI pics as ARMY so I take that into account before I block but I don't comment as much as I used to so as to not spread it. The guys have mentioned not liking it or AI voice but some attention seekers love their "edits" or photos of BTS run through AI apps to "enhance" them or create photos that don't exist. I have been blocking people I do not follow and muting those I do who insist on sharing them. If you are told you are sharing AI, you should take the hint and delete. There's way too much disinformation going around in multiple areas and it's disappointing to see fake military photos this deep in their enlistment and to keep having thr same discussion over and over again. 

     There are a ton of photos available on Weverse of BTS that you can be sure are official and not AI. Why wouldn't you just use those? Nearly every album campaign is there and free to download. Once you click on a picture you get a download button in the top right corner. It asks if you want just that pic or the whole file of x amount of pictures. I always do the full file and it usually takes less than 3 minutes to download all of them. You can also go to the official Instagram pages for the members to get real photos of them. Pinterest used to be a good source until it got overrun by clout chasers creating fake pics. I understand it's hard to tell what is real and what isn't so here's the tips I use. 

1.  If it looks cartoonish it's probably AI. If the colors are too saturated and it looks like a drawing it's probably AI. Check for blurring, count the fingers (because AI messes up hands so sometimes you end up with extra hands or fingers in a pic), and other distortions (things seemingly coming from nowhere, non sensical words or languages, letters, shadows are wrong).
2. Check the eyes. Namjoon has monolids (small or no crease in the eyelid). Jin and Taehyung have 1 monolid eye 1 dual lid eye (crease visible in eyelid). Any pictures with them having dual lids are AI or have been put into an app and edited. Yoongi also sometimes has eyelids that have deeper creases on one eye than the other and lately I've been seeing A LOT of edited AI photos of him. People seeking attention are putting his pics out to get attention from us due to our feelings of missing him and that's manipulative. Be careful what you give likes and attention to. 
3. Look for watermarks. For some reason unbeknownst to me people seem to think they own the rights to a photo because they run it through an editor app so they ruin a pic and slap their lil name on it in a cutesy logo. No hun. The owner of the IP is still Big Hit and the artist in the photo. Argue with the wall. So people will edit photos (badly) and add their name so they can act all high and mighty if someone uses their photo in a video edit or something. These usually end up being the ones with overdone makeup (especially on Jimin) where the guys have 1 long eyelash, red lips, and a lot of blush. The watermark is often there around the shoulder or across the chest. And before video editors try to come for me as someone did before when I mentioned watermarks in this context, I'm not talking about you so stay in your lane. This is about photos that are run through AI only. If you see a photo that looks official but has a person's screenname or something as a watermark it's probably AI. In the case that it's not then it may be a fansite photo which is still a no because they use unauthorized BTS photos to sell on their sites or put together art shows with the photos and they make money off of the intellectual property that belongs to BTS and Big Hit which is illegal. They are officially against Big Hit/Hybe guidelines. 
4. Put it into Google lens. If you put it in Google Lens and it only shows up on X, Facebook, YouTube, or Pinterest then it's AI. If it's from a photo shoot then the magazine, the news article, Weverse, or whatever the original source material is should pull up. 
5. Ask. If you ask and don't get a link to a GOOD source (Facebook or Pinterest does NOT count- unless it's BTS's official Facebook), 99.99999% it's fake. I noticed when I ask I get a like on my comment and crickets. That proves the person posting is looking for engagement and knows its fake. They're online liking their comments but not answering what the source is for the pictures they post. That's a red flag.

     That being said we all make mistakes. I have posted AI edited pics before I knew about Rimini (the app a lot of people use). I had a fake RM pic on my screensaver for a while till I questioned the source and realized it was fake. If you get a correction (someone lets you know a picture is fake) just delete it. You can always find something proper to replace it. At this stage in the game there's 0 excuse for posting fake Yoongi military photos (or anyone elses really) and leaving them up after you're advised it's fake unless it's about attention. What happens when all 7 are back from the military and fake AI pics are normalized and allowed and the military photos don't get attention anymore. Attention seekers will probably start sharing fake relationship photos with AI generated women as the love interest. Those will go straight to tabloids and we'll be trying to convince the gullible to ignore, report, and block. Stop making fake AI a thing in our fandom.