Overview
The Guardian posted an interesting article about “deep fakes” in the pre-AI era, so we thought it might be interesting to take some of those same images and see how they might be doctored using state-of-the-art GenAI models such as Flux and OpenAI 40.
Stalin and Nikolai Yezhov, 1937
The famous photo of Stalin with Nikolai Yezhov, taken in 1937, is a notable example of Soviet photo manipulation. After Yezhov, then head of the NKVD, was executed during Stalin’s purges, he was erased from the image and replaced with water from the canal.
The Original
The historical “deepfake”
Using Flux
With 4o
While making adjustments with 4o might seem similar to traditional inpainting, it does in fact make alterations (sometimes subtle) to the entire image as part of the process.
Blending 4o with the Original Image
Here we’ve take the adjustment from 4o and tried to merge it with the original photograph.
Helicopter Shark
A photobashing of two photographs that appears to show a soldier quickly attempting to scale a ladder on a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter as a great white shark leaps out of the water after them.
The original deepfake
Using 4o to replace the shark with Michael Phelps
Using 4o to replace the shark with a submarine
NOTE
As part of the process of regenerating the images, 4o has a difficult time approximating the graininess of vintage photographs. As a result, even when blending between 4o and the original, some inevitable fringing will occur. This could be somewhat mitigated by re-introducing noise along with a suitable LUT.
Update Jun 2025 - Flux Kontext can do a far better job at making subtle modifications to an existing image while restricting its changes to the localized area in question. The line between fact and fiction continues to blur.