The god illusion: why the pope is so popular as a deepfake image

Madonna posted AI-generated deepfake images showing Pope Francis embracing her, made by Italian digital artist RickDick, renewing debate over AI art that uses the pope. The pope is a frequent deepfake subject, which Sam Stockwell, a research associate at the UK's Alan Turing Institute, attributes to the large volume of photos, videos and audio of Francis on the open web. RickDick said the Francis pictures were made with a model trained on images of the pope and the singer using the paid platform Krea.ai, and that his goal is to make people think and, if possible, smile.