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

You get six rounds. Each shows two landscape photographs of the same kind of weather, such as a distant tornado over open land, lightning over a shore, or a snow-covered forest. 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. The quiz uses landscape stills only. It does not show wreckage, people in distress, or photographs from named disasters.

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 similar weather scenes, not as copies of the real photographs. No real person appears in any image. The quiz does not use the viral hoax images described in the news cited on this page.

On 15 June 2026, YourErie reported that an AI-generated tornado photograph circulated in Waterford, Pennsylvania, during severe weather. On 28 April 2026, KTVO reported that a sheriff’s office in Buena Vista County, Iowa, had to address an AI tornado picture during potential severe weather. In January 2026, fact-checkers including AFP, BBC Verify, Snopes and AccuWeather covered AI snow videos from Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula; BBC said one post was viewed around a million times on X and a TikTok clip was viewed more than a million times, and AccuWeather referred to “millions of views” on TikTok — those figures are the outlets’, not counts we made ourselves. Autocomplete on 12 November 2026 still offered phrases such as “waterford severe weather ai photo” and “russia snow storm ai photos”. Individual posts we read on X about these stories were modest, and some are older than 30 days, which we date honestly on this page. This quiz is a visual practice test. It cannot tell you whether a weather photograph you were sent is AI-made.

Often not. A slender tornado over a green field can be a real storm-chase photograph, and a textbook anvil cloud in golden light can be generated. Clues such as a perfectly empty prairie, a single centred lightning bolt or a hollow golden wave 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 weather in the picture really happened. Read how to prove a photo is not AI for the honest limits.