Image Is Hyper-Realistic Portrait of Statue of Liberty
The Claim
Photo shared as the woman who posed for the design of the Statue of Liberty sculpture in New York.
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Emerging story
An image has been circulating on social media since February this year and continuously reappearing. Users claim the woman in the image posed for the Statue of Liberty, indicating the statue was based on her physical appearance. The statue is based in New York City, in the United States of America.
Misbar’s Analysis
The reverse image search tool TinEye, which can be seen below, revealed that the image was uploaded in July 2020 by a number of credible news publishers. One of them is the New York Post in an article titled “Artist uses AI to create stunning realistic portraits of historical figures” pictured below.
The article reported that the image is a life-like, hyper-realistic portrait rendered using artificial intelligence (AI) by Amsterdam-based artist Bas Uterwijk. Uterwijk uses a program called Artbreeder to recreate the images of iconic figures such as the Statue of Liberty, artist Vincent van Gogh, and George Washington, to name a few, which can all be viewed on his Instagram account.
The Statue of Liberty was a gift of friendship from the people of France to the United States of America, designed by the French sculptor Frederic Auguste Bartholdi, and is considered a universal symbol of democracy and freedom. Based on the findings, the Misbar team concludes the claim as misleading. The image was not used to design the Statue of Liberty, but rather the AI was used to create a life-like rendering of the statue.
