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An image of Pope Francis, the leader of the Catholic church, wearing a large, white puffer jacket has gone viral on social media in the past few days. The 86-year-old pontiff looks stylish, with many people commenting on his fashionable clothes. There is just one problem: the image isn’t real. The pictures above were generated by the artificial intelligence Midjourney, which produces images based on text prompts, and were posted on Reddit on 24 March by an artist who goes by the name of u/trippy_art_special. The user’s account has since been suspended, but one image (the left-hand one) has since spread across Twitter, where it has fooled many. Should we be worried? Web culture expert Ryan Broderick has called the pope image “the first real mass-level AI misinformation case”. But the issue has actually been brewing for a few weeks, following an update to Midjourney that significantly improved the standard of output. Earlier in March, Midjourney-created images of former US president Donald Trump being arrested similarly went viral. Those images were generated from prompts provided by Eliot Higgins, the founder of Bellingcat, an investigative journalism group. “I think this is an example of a wider problem of technologies being pushed into our societies without any oversight, regulation or standards,” says Elinor Carmi at City, University of London. Fears of AI fakery aren’t new. For several years, we have faced the threat of deepfaked images of people’s faces, produced by earlier generations of AI trained on smaller volumes of information, but they have frequently had telltale signs of fakery, such as non-blinking eyes or blurred ears. Midjourney still struggles with hands, often adding additional fingers, but when confronted by an image where hands aren’t the focus, such as the AI pope, people can be fooled. There is also an issue of scale, says Agnes Venema at the University of Malta. The r/midjourney subreddit where the pope images were posted has examples of other, equally convincing AI-generated images produced by its 143,000 members. They include a series of photographs documenting a fictional earthquake that hit the US and Canada in 2001 that has inspired its own lore. The top-voted comment on the post reads: “People in 2025 are going to have a real difficult time with misinformation. People in 2100 won’t know which parts of history were real…” https://www.newscientist.com/article/2366312-should-you-be-worried-that-an-ai-picture-of-the-pope-went-viral/

Bringing joy in the form of cookies is important to Kristy and Pat Rigdon. After spending time in high-stress jobs, they wanted to open a business that would both be pleasing to them and uplift the community. They found that balance in opening a location for Mary’s Mountain Cookies in Colorado Springs. Kristy Rigdon said she and her husband were at a point in their careers where they were ready to do something different. Pat had been a deputy chief for the Colorado Springs Police Department and had been in law enforcement for 30 years. Kristy had been an educator, principal, and district administrator in the school system. They had always thought Mary’s Mountain Cookies (founded by Mary Johns in 1991 in Fort Collins) would work well in Colorado Springs. The Rigdon family was introduced to Mary’s when they used to visit Breckenridge (in a location that no longer exists). Later their daughter went to Colorado State University in Fort Collins. Rigdon and her husband would joke with their daughter: “Don’t come home unless you have Mary’s Mountain Cookies with you!” So when they reached out to Johns about opening a location in the Springs and then met with her, everything seemed to fall into place. “It fit the criteria we were looking for as far as doing something different that was fun, brought joy to others, and allowed us to contribute to our community.” The Rigdons wanted to find a downtown location since they had also lived in the Old North End for eight years. Johns, who had stopped looking at expansion inquiries when their proposal came in, told the Rigdons, “Timing is everything.” The Rigdons’ proposal struck a chord for some reason and the downtown area in the Springs was expanding. “The business side of it made sense. We really liked her. She seemed to like us. And our previous work experience and leadership skills, just transfer nicely into running this business.” They opened their location in July 2022. Rigdon says that it is also a creative outlet because she does a lot of decorating and putting packages together. But she says rather than creating their own business from scratch, they looked for a franchise or a licensing situation. “Mary’s was nice and packaged. She is a great partner in what we do in the store.” It is not a traditional franchise because it is directly connected with the founder ensuring a texture of authenticity. “Mary’s very responsive and, as far as our guests and our customers, we really just wanted to go for that ‘Wow!’ factor when they walk in the store because that was something that drew us to Mary’s, to begin with, with our kids.” “Going to Mary’s was an experience. So we really aim for, when people come downtown, they’ve got to go to Mary’s. That’s kind of our goal.” Rigdon describes, when customers walk into their store, that there is a cookie case full of 24 varieties of cookies. “And when we say Mary’s Mountain Cookies, we mean it. Our cookies weigh over a quarter of a pound and they are delicious. It’s just visual, the sight, and then the smell when you walk in, you smell delicious cookies baking all day … it’s really a visceral experience https://themaverickobserver.com/marys-mountain-cookies-bringing-joy-through-cookies/