How to Spot AI Use In Photos & Videos
From chatbots to movie recommendations in streaming services, AI is everywhere in 2026. AI use is hotly debated, especially in creative fields such as art, image design, and image creation. Some people love it, and others want to avoid it at all costs, labeling anything generated by AI as “AI slop.”
Before we get into how to spot AI in images and photography, let’s do a quick review of what AI actually is and how it works.
Artificial intelligence isn’t “intelligent” in a human sense. It “learns” analyzing large amounts of data, discovering patterns about what we like and dislike, and using those patterns to generate results. When it comes to images, AI is very good at figuring out what something SHOULD look like based on similar images that it has seen before. That ability can make AI-generated images convincing and hard to spot. However, it doesn’t actively seek out new knowledge and experiences. Those desires are still human.
Some art studios, graphics designers, and restoration centers have been turning to AI to assist them in their work. And to be fair, it shows great promise when used thoughtfully. While AI lacks the capacity for true artistic inspiration, it can link together ideas from a vast library of previous human experiences to suggest ideas or directions for artists to build on.
That said, AI still has limits. It doesn’t “see” an image the way we do. It evaluates pixels and patterns, doing its best to approximate reality, but it can miss context and details, and meaning that stand out to the human eye.
So, if you are looking to spot the difference, here are a few tips to recognize images that are generated by AI:
Edges Don’t Lie: If you have the original, look to the edges. AI systems don’t really know where photographs end, so they have to guess. Often, the result will be that the photo looks zoomed in, and about an inch around the border will be missing. We call this phenomenon “AI nibble.”
Look for teeth and fingers: AI work is generative. Every time it’s asked to do something, it creates something new, rather than just editing what already exists. It can’t just change the background color of your high school yearbook photo. It has to rebuild EVERYTHING. This means it has to guess on a lot of things, especially when details get small. If someone’s hand suddenly has 6 fingers, or the number of teeth in their mouth has changed in a portrait, that is a surefire sign of pure AI.
Check out the backgrounds: For photographs, you might see garbled text on a sign, or a tree floating, something that looks fine until you really focus on it. In videos, the background might be unnaturally still, or people might be walking backwards.
AI work is only going to get better as time goes by, and as long as it’s used properly, that’s a good thing. When we have tools, we want those tools to work well. By using these diligent steps, you’ll be able to more regularly identify what is the work of an artist, and what is simply the tool doing the job by itself.