This is definitely AI. And kinda old AI at that. The backgrounds are nondescript, the facial hair is ambiguous, the face looks like one of those “upload a photo to see it realistically move with the magic of AI”, the shirt looks airbrushed and ambiguous, he has dark eyes instead of very blue eyes like in real life, and if you try to look up pictures of any interviews of him in those particular years, he usually has facial hair and a button down, sometimes with a jacket.
Compare the upper right and lower left picture on this post with this similar meme. Film grain is missing (possibly due to AI “beauty filters”?) and how the upper right image, his eyes are way more blue. I think the original meme creator probably wanted to make it look like all 4 pictures were the same gray shirt rather than 4 different gray shirts since the bottom left shirt in the picture I posted is heathered gray instead of flat gray.
They’re not generated, it’s just jpeg compression
There’s some uncannyness in face element position and orientations.
I think the compression has made the lighting feel unnaturally soft. It reminds me of shitty HDR or mid 2010s video game cutscene.
in the next photo, his head starts spinning parallel to the camera
can’t put my finger on it
This is definitely AI. And kinda old AI at that. The backgrounds are nondescript, the facial hair is ambiguous, the face looks like one of those “upload a photo to see it realistically move with the magic of AI”, the shirt looks airbrushed and ambiguous, he has dark eyes instead of very blue eyes like in real life, and if you try to look up pictures of any interviews of him in those particular years, he usually has facial hair and a button down, sometimes with a jacket.
Compare the upper right and lower left picture on this post with this similar meme. Film grain is missing (possibly due to AI “beauty filters”?) and how the upper right image, his eyes are way more blue. I think the original meme creator probably wanted to make it look like all 4 pictures were the same gray shirt rather than 4 different gray shirts since the bottom left shirt in the picture I posted is heathered gray instead of flat gray.
I don’t think it’s pure ai I think it’s really shitty ai upscaling
Bro this is 100% AI lol.