A picture showing priests and cardinals gathered around a Satanic-like figure in a black mass is circulating on social media, shared in various contexts.
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A fake image is circulating on social media showing men dressed in religious clothing and apparently worshipping a statue of Baphomet — a pagan half-man, half-goat figure often associated with Satanism.
Sometimes the image is shared with captions alleging that it shows Vatican figures worshipping the devil, while at other times it's shared as a thumbnail for YouTube videos claiming to reveal secrets about the Holy See.
The claims and even the picture itself might seem dramatic and outlandish, and that's because they are: a closer inspection shows that the image has clearly been AI-generated.
While the image might look intricate at first glance, it contains many common clues indicating that it has been digitally created.
AI images typically struggle to generate hands, which can be seen below: the statue has missing or seemingly cut-off fingers.
Another clue comes from people's faces: again, AI isn't very good at generating facial features, which explains why the figures in the image below don’t have any. Or if they do, they’re distorted.
The priests on either side of the altar have oddly shaped faces, and the crowds at the back have smudged features and hollowed-out eyes.
The raiment of each figure also looks odd — the robes of the central cardinal appear to blend into the altar, for example, while others have missing arms or are standing in impossible positions.
A reverse image search of the picture shows that its use goes back several years and is often used to supposedly reveal secrets about the Vatican.
Bizarre claims often hit the Vatican
Fake news targeting the Catholic Church is nothing new and often centres on conspiracy theories.
In fact, anti-Catholic sentiment and false claims that the Vatican is secretly a Satanic organisation goes back hundreds of years.
Recently, the Pope himself has become a common victim of AI: who can forget the fake image of Pope Francis wearing a long white puffer jacket, for example?
Earlier this year, he was also the target of an altered and miscaptioned video alleging that he had a secret agenda to control the world and chastised Christians for watching The Hobbit and Game of Thrones.