For three years you could spot an AI image the way you spot a toupee. Something about it was slightly, fatally off. The hands. The melted text on a shopfront. The way light landed everywhere except where it should. Sometime in the last year that tell quietly died. The best models now make pictures that survive a second look, a third, and a skeptical zoom, and the old parlor game of "is this real" has stopped being interesting.
Hands made with Minimax Image .webp)
hands made with GPT Image 2
The interesting question is narrower and far more useful: of all the latest AI image models good enough to fool you, which one makes the particular image you need, and which ones are still faking it in ways that will cost you later?
A model that paints a flawless face can still spell "BAKERY" as "BAEKRY."
One that nails a crowded street will quietly turn a wine glass into frosted plastic.
The differences moved from obvious to specific, which is exactly what we will discuss in this piece.
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