An AI image of Pope Francis in a puffer coat is taken for real

A photorealistic image of Pope Francis in a white puffer coat, made with version 5 of Midjourney’s image model, spread across social media in late March 2023 and was widely taken for a photograph. Forbes and BuzzFeed News traced it to a Chicago construction worker.

Why it mattered It became the example people reached for when describing how far consumer image generators had come, at a point when no watermarking or provenance standard was in place.