Real or AI?Can you spot the AI pet photo?

You get six rounds. Each shows two photographs of the same kind of pet, such as a tabby kitten, a Siamese cat or a husky, the sort you might see in a lost-and-found post or a social feed. One is a real photograph and one was generated by AI. Tap the one you think is AI, see which was which, read what gave it away, and get a score you can share.

They are public-domain or CC0 photographs from Wikimedia Commons, listed with the photographer and licence in the image credits table on this page. The AI images were generated by TimeBinder for this quiz from text descriptions of the same kinds of pets. No real person appears in any image. The quiz does not use photographs of the named pets described in the news cited on this page.

On 4 November 2026, the BBC reported that scammers were sending AI-generated pictures of missing cats and then demanding reward money or gift cards. On 27 October 2026, ABC News Australia reported a Western Australian man who was sent an AI-generated picture of his missing Irish wolfhound after offering a $10,000 reward; the ACCC said it was aware of the pattern. Autocomplete on 12 November 2026 still offered phrases such as “ai pet photos”, “ai pet photos generator”, “ai generated pet photos” and “ai missing dog scam”. Xinhua reported on 10 November 2026 that videos under the Douyin hashtag “AI pets” had been viewed more than 3.1 billion times, and that one Bilibili creator’s 92 clips had more than 6.5 million likes and 92 million views; those are figures reported by Xinhua, not counts we made ourselves. Individual posts we read on X that day about missing-pet scams were modest, which we disclose with the links on this page. This quiz is a visual practice test. It is not a tool for checking a picture someone sent you, and it cannot tell you whether a file you hold is AI-made.

Often not. A slightly messy snapshot of a cat on a sofa can be a real photograph, and a perfectly posed husky in snow can be generated. Clues such as catalogue lighting, a show-stance pose or a cinematic dusk lake help on a still image, but they are hints, not proof, and they fade once a photo is cropped, filtered or re-shared.

No. TimeBinder is not a tool for identifying generated media, and it cannot tell you whether AI made a file. A TimeBind shows that an exact file existed no later than a recorded time and that a copy you hold still matches it. That is useful when you can say “here is this file, recorded by this time,” not when you need to know how the picture was made.

Your score is worked out in your browser. This page sends a few anonymous events to our analytics, such as the quiz being finished with a score band, never your name or email.

Keep the original file unedited, and make a TimeBind of it when you take or finish it. Later, a copy that still matches the fingerprint is the same file, and the record shows it existed no later than the recorded time. It does not show who took the photo or that the animal in the picture is yours. Read how to prove a photo is not AI for the honest limits.