Lately I’ve been thinking about the weird gut reaction we have to AI-generated images, especially the ones that almost look real. It’s called the “uncanny valley,” and it’s that off-putting feeling you get when something is trying to pass as human but misses the mark. You can’t always explain it, but your brain knows. The shadows don’t land right. The skin’s too smooth. The eyes are glossy or blank. Something’s just… off.
And maybe it’s not just a tech issue. Maybe it’s emotional.
This photo I shot last summer (on May 30, 2023, in Nashville) isn’t perfect. The lighting is harsh, the pose is caught mid-flail, and you can feel the sweat and speed. But it’s real. You can sense the movement, the sun, the feeling of a skater practicing tricks on a quiet road surrounded by open fields. There’s something about capturing a moment like that that AI still can’t touch.
Out of curiosity, I found a similar image on Pexels. The pose is smoother. The background is cleaner. But it feels more like a stock photo than a captured memory. Then I asked DALL·E to generate a version of that scene – a skater mid-air in a photorealistic landscape. What came back was wild. It actually terrified me. The picture of an AI figure who looked eerily similar to my skateboarding cousin still felt off. While it was creepily accurate, the smoothness and perfection of the “photo” is clearly fake compared to the one I took.
And here’s the thing I’ve been talking about with people my age: we can always tell. Maybe it’s because we grew up in the age of deepfakes, face filters, and Instagram illusions, but Gen Z has a pretty sharp BS meter when it comes to visuals. It’s not even just about technical flaws. You can feel when an image or a video isn’t grounded in reality.
But our parents and grandparents? Totally different story. My friend’s grandma will watch an obviously AI-generated TikTok of a fake Biden and be like, “Wow, I can’t believe he said that.” And it’s not her fault, she just didn’t grow up developing that visual literacy. For her, if it looks like video, it must be real.
That generational gap matters. Because as AI gets better at simulating authenticity, those most at risk of being manipulated are often the least equipped to spot the cues.
The uncanny valley isn’t just visual. It’s emotional. It’s cultural. And right now, it’s a reminder that real, human-made media still hits different. We know when something has soul, and when something is mimicking it.
Image Credits:
- Original photo: “Skater in motion, Nashville 2023,” by Lindy (taken 5/30/2023).
- Stock photo: “Man in Blue and White Plaid Dress Shirt Riding Skateboard” by cottonbro studio, via Pexels.
- AI image: Generated using DALL·E with the prompt: “a boy doing an olly on a skateboard on a blacktop parking lot in front of a backdrop of a blue sky with clouds and a meadow with a tree line”
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