Which is the Real Image? Bridge at Sunset

Below are 4 images.

Only one is real. I know this because I took it myself.

My photo is of the Clark Bridge near Alton, IL on a chilly winter evening.

The other 3 images are AI-generated. I created them using Ideogram.ai and ChatGPTChatGPT is an advanced language model developed by OpenAI, designed to understand and generate human... More.

Which one do you think is the real image? See the answer below!

The real image of the bridge is:

Image #3

Some clues that give away the AI images:

💡 1. Lighting and Bridge Illumination

#3 (REAL): The bridge is lit by streetlights that cast natural reflections in the water. The lights aren’t perfectly spaced or overly symmetrical. The glow slightly disperses through the mist — very hard for AIArtificial Intelligence (AI) is basically when computers get smart—really smart. Imagine if your c... More to replicate convincingly.
#1, #2, and #4: The bridges are not lit — or the lighting is unnaturally smooth or clean. #2 especially has glowing cables that look fake and overly saturated.

🌁 2. Atmosphere and Haze

#3: The moisture or fog in the air adds a realistic softness and desaturation to the background. There’s slight noise and grain in the image — signs of a real low-light exposure.
AI Giveaways:
- #1, #2, and #4 all have unnaturally clean skies or repeated cloud"The cloud" refers to storage and services that are accessed over the internet instead of being stor... More patterns. #2’s dramatic sky and reflections look too perfect, like a dream sequence.

🌊 3. Water Behavior and Reflections

#3: The reflections of the lights shimmer unevenly in the water, bending slightly due to ripples. You can see irregularities in the surface that real long-exposure shots produce.
AI:
- #1, #2, and #4 all have water that is too glassy — the reflections are mirror-smooth, which is a common AI artifact.

🌲 4. Foreground Object (Log or Branch)

#3: The branch is partially submerged, casting multiple shadows and distortions, and its ends disappear slightly into the mist. It also looks realistically tangled and rough.
AI:
- #1 and #4’s logs are extremely clean, dry, and appear “posed.”
- #2’s foreground log is too straight and shadowless — like it was placed there by a design bot.