Don't believe the AI ...

Added: 2026-05-13

[00:00:01]Hello everybody. Hope you're doing well and thanks for joining us for another video. The hype and interest from the Arteimus 2 mission continues across social media and so does the conspiracy claims that it was all fake. Though ironically, a lot of the claims that Arteimus was fake are relying on using faked evidence. For example, I saw this tweet from former British politician Andrew Bridgen, which shows two images, one labeled Apollo 8, December 24, 1968, and the other labeled Arteimus 2, April 6, 2026. And it says, quote, "It's a remarkable coincidence that the Earth is in exactly the same orientation to the moon with exactly the same cloud coverage when these two pictures were taken 68 years apart. Am I now a coincidence theorist? End quote. And Andrew wasn't the only person posting trying to claim that this shows Arteimus was fake. Except amusingly, the entire post is wrong. I mean, it's pretty clear that these are basically the same photo, but with a window frame added to the right hand image, except they aren't exactly the same photo. I tried duplicating the left one onto the right, but they don't line up. The Earth's rotation is slightly different and the camera position in relation to the moon has shifted. But I'm sure conspiracy theorists will say something like, "Obviously NASA wouldn't be so silly as to just perfectly duplicate the photos because that would be too obvious. Maybe they just added subtle differences in to try and make it more believable." So, let's go through all the ways we can tell that this is fake evidence. I mean, for starters, Arteimus was never going to be able to get a photo like this in the first place. Photos like this from Apollo were taken from lunar orbit, but their orbits were around 60 to 70 m or about 110 km above the surface. Arteimus 2 didn't enter lunar orbit. They did a flyby of the moon, and the closest distance they got to the moon was 4,067 mi or 6,545 km. So Arteimus was never going to get a photo looking across the moon's surface with what is clearly meant to be a wide-angle shot given the window frame is in view. It would be like expecting photos from the ISS to look like photos that you take from an airplane window.

[00:02:29]In reality, these are the actual photos that were taken during Arteimus 2.

[00:02:35]similar in basic layout of the moon in the foreground and the Earth in the background, but they're clearly much further from the moon and the Earth looks very different. Different phase, different clouds than the Apollo photo.

[00:02:48]So, the image from the tweet claiming to be from Arteimus 2 wasn't actually from Arteimus at all. Someone has taken a photo from the Apollo library, stretched the Earth slightly to a different shape, added a window frame, and claimed it was from Arteimus. But not only that, the claimed Apollo 8 photo isn't even from Apollo 8. This is the famous Earthrise shot from Apollo 8, photo number 2382 from Film Magazine 14. The cloud patterns and the visible land is completely different. There's also a larger gap between the moon's horizon and the Earth, and the lunar surface is a completely different terrain. Instead, the photo that this meme claims to be from Apollo 8 is actually part of a sequence of photos taken during Apollo 11. From magazine 44, photos 6547 through to 6564 is a sequence of photos as they orbited the moon and the Earth came into view. So, not only is this tweet using an edited Apollo photo and claiming it to be from Arteimus, but they couldn't even get right which Apollo photo they're using. So, to answer Andrew's question about is he now a coincidence theorist, no. At best, assuming he's just seen this online and reposted it, then he's someone who parrots false claims without first verifying them. Or he's the original source of the claim, which means he knows it's fake evidence, in which case he's a liar. Now, there's a few other faked images that are being used to claim Arteimus is fake, but I'll get on to those in a bit because rather annoyingly, there's also fake images claiming to actually be from Arteimus whilst not disputing that Artimus happened, which is just going to add more fuel to the conspiracy. like this post from Zone Astronomy saying, quote, "The most breathtaking photos from the historic Arteimus 2 mission. From the hidden far side of the moon to the Earth floating like a fragile blue jewel in the endless void, these images delivered everything we dreamed of and more.

[00:04:52]However, these are the four images that were attached to that post, all clearly being AI generated. I mean, for starters, these are the actual photos taken during Arteimus that these images seem to be based off. If you ever see posts like this claiming that they're Arteimus photos, an easy way to check is just go on Google and search NASA Arteimus Gallery. They've put all the photos that they've released online there to check over. None of these images come from NASA. They aren't accurate to what you'd expect to see, and they aren't even consistent with each other.

[00:05:30]On all of them, they show stars visible in the background despite areas of the image showing terrain being lit by the sun that is correctly exposed. Now, cameras have a rating called dynamic range, which measures the ratio of the brightest to the darkest regions of a photo that a sensor can handle. Right?

[00:05:49]If you stand in a dark room and you try photographing towards a window when it's daylight outside, if you set your camera settings to see the room correctly exposed, the window will just be a bright mess. If you expose for the window to be correct, then the room will be very dark. To demonstrate this, here's a little setup I've made. I've got two objects near each other. Now, I've got a very bright light source pointing at one of them, but I've put a partition in between the objects to block the light from reaching the other object. If I try and take a photograph of it now, I either expose for the dark object, in which case the bright object becomes just too bright, or I expose for the bright object, and you can't see the dark one. So, I'm going to take two photos, one with my phone and one with my main camera. And I'll aim to have the bright object correctly exposed for both. And this is what it looks like when I try and raise the shadows for both. It's still very grainy because there's not a lot of detail there in the first place. However, my main camera can reveal more detail of it than my phone can because my main camera's sensor has much better dynamic range than my phone.

[00:07:00]A higher range means a greater scope between the brightest and darkest areas that a sensor can handle. And the range is measured in EV or exposure value with each EV step meaning half or double the amount of light. Shooting in daylight has an EV value of 15 whereas shooting the Milky Way at night is an EV of minus 7 or minus 8. So there's a 22 EV difference between the brightest regions of this image, the sunlit parts of the Earth and the Moon versus the darkest regions, which would be the shadow side of the moon and the Milky Way in the background. The best camera on the market today has dynamic range of around 14 or 15 EV. That is basically a long-winded way of saying there is no camera on the market that could possibly take a photo in this situation and get a result that looks like that. Think of it like how if you're outside on a bright sunny day and the sun's in your ey line, your eye is adjusting for the sunlight, so you struggle to see the dark areas in front of you. That's why people put baseball caps on with the peak forward so that it blocks the sun and allows their eyes to adjust to the darker regions. Cameras hit the same basic limitation. And it's easy to verify as well because you can try and photograph the Milky Way when there's a full moon.

[00:08:23]If you expose for the Milky Way, the moon will just look more like the sun.

[00:08:27]If you expose for the moon, then you'll struggle to make out any stars at all.

[00:08:32]It's usually why it's recommended to get the clearest photos of stars to try and shoot when there's either a new moon or when the moon hasn't risen yet. Then we have the AI inconsistency that the Earth and the Moon are being lit from the left of the frame through to being lit from the right of the frame, which would mean about 14 days have passed between images. Though this shot has the Earth being lit from far too high a latitude, physically not even possible. So these images are definitely AI, but are being passed off as genuine photos from the Aremis mission, even though the actual photos are publicly available to use.

[00:09:10]But I think accounts like this are more interested in the clicks rather than the facts. But the AI generated claims of fakery even stretch beyond photos and go into videos. There was this video which shows the crew waving by to the camera and then the camera apparently turning around to look out of the window towards Earth.

[00:09:35]appears.

[00:09:40]>> And the original poster asks, "If there were four astronauts on Optimus 2's mission, who was filming?" And again, this has been reposted by many who think it's strange. Well, it's not strange.

[00:09:53]It's fake. If you look at the original live broadcast of this that went out, it doesn't end with the crew all frantically waving and then the camera moving. The camera remains fixed in place throughout the entire broadcast.

[00:10:07]It was just set up and left running so that everyone could appear in front of the camera, just like how I'm filming here. But there's nobody behind the camera. The Arteimus broadcast instead ends with Christina flipping around to float upside down relative to the camera. audio com.

[00:10:30]>> And there's also a major flaw with it that the camera turns around towards the window and the sound changes from clear talking by the crew into mumble sound of it being underwater.

[00:10:46]Yeah.

[00:10:52]>> Now, it seems the inclusion of this is supposed to tie in with the claims that spacew walk footage is faked underwater.

[00:10:59]It's not. They use an underwater mockup of the International Space Station to simulate weightlessness. But the lighting underwater is completely different to what we see in spacew walk footage. So, it can't be faked footage that we're actually seeing. I'm not going to delve into it here. I've already done this video a few years ago that goes over all the problems which I will link down below if you want to check it out. But the problem for this clip is the underwater sounds like this only occur when the camera itself is submerged and exposed to water.

[00:11:39]Even if this is a mockup, they have to be inside a sealed mockup. Otherwise, since the astronauts aren't suited up, they're going to be doing less cheering and more drowning. If you've ever seen anybody inside a submarine when the submarine's submerged, the camera audio isn't muffled like it's underwater because the camera itself isn't actually drowning. Then there was also this image being shared around a lot of the same interview, but with the image depicting that they're being in a studio surrounded by an entire film crew. Now, this isn't a particularly highresolution image, so we can't make out much detail.

[00:12:17]However, I was able to find a higher resolution copy of it online for us to clearly see all of the problems with it.

[00:12:24]I mean, for starters, Christina looks rather different, especially with that third foot. Jeremy's legs seem to have been amputated by a wall that wasn't there in the broadcast. And that lighting is never going to work because most of the lights are on the wrong side of the cabin mockup. They'll be lighting up the film crew more than the astronauts. Then all the astronauts and the cabin's perspective is aimed at the camera that's apparently taking this behind-the-scenes photo when it should be being aimed to the camera on the left that's supposed to be filming them.

[00:12:58]Though, I'm not entirely sure what that cameraman is filming because the previews on all the displays look nothing like the broadcast we watched.

[00:13:08]And this image contradicts the previous video that we saw because had the camera spun around whilst in this studio, it wouldn't have shown Earth out of the window, it would have shown a bunch of people sat at a desk. But then there's also this one where someone has rendered a green screen studio with the astronauts on wires, which again completely contradicts the studio image we've just looked at because they can't simultaneously be in a green screen studio whilst inside a mockup of Orion.

[00:13:37]And this one has its own problems. Like again, the crew are looking at the camera that's supposed to be taking the behindthe-scene shot, not the camera that would actually be recording them.

[00:13:48]And Reed Wiseman's arm is cut off from view, which was caused in the broadcast by him leaning against the large pile of all their flight suits. Well, in this image, that pile isn't physically there, but it's also not part of the green screen because you can see the green screen is in the corner of the room, way behind Reed. So, his arm is being cut off by thin air. There was this photo posted by Flat Earth Dave showing what is claimed to be the interview being faked inside a zerog plane. Now, this idea hits a few fundamental limitations of zerog planes. They can achieve weightlessness by flying in a parabolic arc as they near the top of the ark and begin to pitch into a dive. That sense of weightlessness is achieved, but it can only last for about 30 seconds at a time before the plane then has to pull into a climb ready for the next ark during which time the people on board experience close to twice the amount of normal gravity. The movie Apollo 13 quite famously used a zerog plane to shoot all of the scenes that were set in space in order to get an authentic look of weightlessness. However, you will notice watching those scenes, the camera constantly has to cut between different views. And that's because they could only record for 30 seconds at a time.

[00:15:17]30% though like this and then we'll let them come up.

[00:15:29]>> So the scenes are made up of pieces from numerous plane arcs all stuck together and masked by camera cuts. The interview with the Arteimus crew is several minutes non-stop. No cuts, no camera angle changes, and no sudden loss of weightlessness. If you want a good idea of what such an interview would look like in a zerog plane, check out the music video for Okay Go's song, Upside Down and Inside Out. They shot the entire thing in one take on a zerog plane. And they even have a behindthe-scenes video detailing how they plan the whole thing out. They had to choreograph into the routine that they'd return to their seats and stay still for the gaps in between each period of weightlessness and then sort of speed up those sections to fit the rest of the song. The whole thing is amazing to watch, but it looks absolutely nothing like the Arteimus interview. However, arguably the best part of this image and the unquestionable proof that it is fake is somebody admitted to faking it and sending it to Flat Earth Dave as a prank. Professor Dave has a video detailing all of this, which I'll also link below, that includes the email exchanges that the person had with Flat Earth Dave, as well as showing the prompts that the person inputed into an image generator to create the AI image in the first place. They knew it was fake. They were just pranking Dave. And either through desperation or a complete lack of understanding, flat Earth Dave was all too happy to start posting this image and claiming it proves Arteimus was fake. Even though it's physically impossible to create such a long single take video which matches Arteimus by using a zerog plane and it further contradicts the other images claiming to show fakery. We've got a green screen studio, a mockup studio, and a mockup in a plane. And we also have one more, which is a mockup with a green screen and wires. Now, this video actually includes a few different claims of fakery, all of which we can tell are AI generated. So, let's tackle the interview first. We have a mockup of what is presumably supposed to be Arteimus, but it actually looks more like a corridor from the International Space Station. The area of the cabin visible behind the crew in the interview, which is the closed hatch, for some reason has been replaced with a doorway and a green screen. The preview monitors in the studio are again showing the view from our vantage point, not what the actual main camera would be seeing. But then, what is the camera supposed to be seeing? Because for some bizarre reason, they've got a mockup of the spacecraft for the crew to be in, but then they've got the crew hanging from wires above it.

[00:18:12]Why not inside it? Given that the wires would still be visible in the green screen footage, so they'd still need to be edited out, they might as well edit it out from the mockup footage instead.

[00:18:24]Plus, filming them in front of a green screen like this, they wouldn't cast any shadows on their surroundings. So when you then edit them into the mockup later, they either wouldn't be casting any shadows or reflections on the interior, which would look completely fake, or they'd have to painstakingly go through the footage and add them in by hand. For example, we can see there's a GoPro mounted up here, which I think is what was recording the crew during the launch, but we can see reflections catching in the lens caused by the astronauts moving around. Those reflections wouldn't happen if the crew weren't actually in front of it when they were filming it. And you can see shadows being cast on the cabin as well.

[00:19:04]Like there's a shadow from Jeremy Hansen being cast on the ceiling above him. And it keeps changing as he moves around.

[00:19:11]Speaking of shadows, let's address this part of the clip showing an SLS rocket and a launchpad mockup inside a studio.

[00:19:19]Presumably, this is suggesting the launch footage was created in a studio.

[00:19:24]Even though thousands of people went and watched the rocket launch in person, people who weren't even at the launch saw it, there were people on planes who watched it launch. There were people who lived in the general area of Florida just going about their day-to-day lives who saw it launch. So, what would studio footage of a model rocket achieve given that they still need an actual rocket on the pad for everyone to watch and launch? I did have to giggle at this guy down here who appears to be gliding around the studio, but the big thing for me is the shadows. No professional studio would ever set up a shot like this with a green screen. The first rule of shooting with a green screen is evenly lit background. The point of a green screen or a blue screen for CGI is you film your actors in front of the screen, then you can key out the particular color of the background afterwards and replace it with whatever you want. Which is why you never wear clothes of a similar color. Otherwise, those get keyed out as well. Just look at any weather presenter who's ever presented the weather whilst wearing green. I even experienced a similar thing a while back. We did a live stream in Antarctica and one of the people had a sort of teal green patch on their jacket and unbeknownst to us at the time, the laptop's owner, who typically streams in front of a green screen, had the streaming software set to automatically key out any green in the scene and replace it with their background. Keying doesn't just remove the color from the background, it removes it from everywhere. So to work around this, what they want is a background color as close to a single shade as possible. Now, you want to make sure that this light isn't so bright that you're casting a shadow onto your green screen or blue screen or whatever.

[00:21:16]You want your green screen to have even lighting from corner to corner. Meaning that you don't want half your green screen to have a bright side and the other half a dark side. You want even lighting across the entire screen. No shadows and no wrinkles. So, even lighting across the entire backdrop, no shading across different areas, otherwise you're needing to then key out multiple different colors, which then risks it seeping into other areas of the shot that you don't want removed. And the shadows on the backdrop here are completely unusable. The shadow of the top one is not only visible, it's close to black. It's that dark. If you tried keying it out, it will probably take half the tower along with it. Then we have this one, which is supposed to depict how they fake the external view of Arteimus based on the view of the preview monitor that now at least shows something other than the view that we're seeing. However, the Orion capsule is completely wrong for this. The view we saw throughout the mission was from GoPro cameras mounted on the ends of the service module solar panel. So they were mainly used for seeing views from behind Orion looking forward. Interestingly, apart from shots like this where NASA moved one of the solar panels across to have the GoPro aimed at the Orion capsule itself and we can see the crew members inside through the window. But for this shot based on that mockup and where the sloped area is so that it gets wider, the camera would have to be above the mockup looking straight down at the floor, not towards the moon. And there's also more AI images knocking around claiming to be from Arteimus that actually aren't. I saw this post from Joe Moshi simply says what a site. So not claiming Arteimus was a lie and granted not specifically claiming that they are from Arteimus 2 either. But this was posted around the same time that Arteimus 2 was near the moon. And given that it's been viewed over 600,000 times when I saw it, it's been liked at least 28 and a half thousand times and retweeted three and a half thousand times. I think it's safe to say there's many people who think this is supposedly from Arteimus. And there was another account called Amazing Physics that also posted it and specifically talked about Artimus 2 photographing the Orientale basin for the first time, implying that this is a photo of it. even though it's clearly an AI generated image. Again, the viewer's perspective is very close to the moon's surface when Artemus was nowhere near close enough to get a shot like this. The basin also doesn't look like that. This is the basin as it was captured several years ago. It doesn't have huge raised sides like a crater. It looks more like ripples on water. Now, Arteimus did actually see this basin in its entirety, and they were the first humans to do so because Apollo missions didn't orbit at a low enough latitude or a high enough altitude to see the entire basin. But this is the photo that Arteimus took of it. There have even been at least two other sets of images posted claiming to be Arteimus' view of the basin, but again, they don't match the actual basin, and they don't even match the other images. This image shows elements of the spacecraft outside the window that look nothing like the Orion capsule. In fact, it looks more like the ISS, which of course has never been to the moon. Though granted, it's likely only people with a longtime interest in space would pick up on these fairly subtle inaccuracies.

[00:24:52]But probably the most glaring clue that this is AI rather than an actual photo from Arteimus is the fact that there's a moon also in the background. Same with this other post also from Amazing Physics saying that moment when Artemus 2 got closer to the moon and the Earth was 238,000 mi away. Except again, we're looking at two moons. We're looking at two moons that are both lit from the side even though the sun is behind them.

[00:25:21]And with the sun in view, you would never see stars next to it. Then Orion doesn't have a huge circular window like this. And for some reason, there seems to be an astronaut outside without a helmet. Maybe they just popped outside for a smoke while he enjoyed the view.

[00:25:39]Next, there's this one from All Day Astronomy claiming to be an image of the Apollo 11 landing site taken from Arteimus 2, which this couldn't be because to see Apollo 11's landing site like this, you need to be pretty close to the surface. The images like this that we've seen in the past from orbiters like the LRO sit in an orbit that at its furthest point is about 100 miles above the moon and gets as close as 12 mi to the surface. That's 63,000 ft. So closer than spy planes like the U2 and the SR71 are when they cruise above Earth. As stated previously, Arteimus didn't get within 4,000 mi of the moon, and its closest approach to the moon was around the backside, whereas the Apollo 11 landing site was in the Sea of Tranquility on the earthfacing side. This is a photo as they were seeing the moon eclipse the sun. And this looks like the edge of the sea of crises and the sea of ficundity with the sea of tranquility being further around the moon. so obscured from our view. So, Arteimus was never in a position to get a detailed view of the Apollo 11 landing site. Now, some comments have pointed out it's not a photo from Artimus 2, but instead say it's a photo from the LRO, but in reality, it's not even that. It's more like an AI interpretation of the LRO photo, given that if we compare this image with one from the LRO, the craters surrounding the Luna module are all different. In fact, this image doesn't match any of the Apollo landing sites.

[00:27:18]And we have this image. I saw this one posted by Daily Science Info. Though, just to highlight how easily these false claims can spread, it seems actor Ben Stiller retweeted it saying, quote, "This is an amazing shot." End quote. I can't imagine how many people must have saw his repost of it and believed it was from Arteimus. He seemingly later removed the post with someone asking why would he delete it, probably because someone pointed out to him that that isn't a photo that NASA posted from Arteimus as the original post claimed.

[00:27:51]Again, you can just look through the NASA galleries for the Arteimus 2 mission to see that this image doesn't appear anywhere within it. But we can figure out that this image is AI generated rather than an actual Arteimus photo just by analyzing some of the aspects of the image. Arguably the biggest clue is its daylight and we're clearly seeing Antarctica. However, during April, at least part of Antarctica is always in darkness. The South Pole certainly is because at South Pole Station, they don't see the sun at all between March and October.

[00:28:25]Antarctica isn't in complete sunlight until around December. Then there's the issue that Artemus returned to Earth traveling to the east and it came in over the Pacific to splash down off the west coast of the US and they came in straight directly from their return to the moon. They didn't go into an orbit around Earth first. So, their return path to Earth wouldn't put them anywhere close to being able to see Antarctica in its entirety because they would have been too far north. If they came back to Earth from the altitude and the location depicted in this image, they probably would have ended up in the Atlantic, not the Pacific. Though, from that altitude, they may well have landed in mainland Europe. Now, we've had images from around the moon and images near the Earth. So, let's address some of the ones claiming to be after they've landed, like this one from John Stewart as he asks, "Why are they suddenly wearing different shoes?" Though, I should make it clear, this is not the comedian John Stewart. This is a different John Stewart that's making these posts. Because the left image is a capture taken during NASA's live stream after they were picked up by the helicopters and returned to the ship, and the right is another AI mockup that is completely wrong. For starters, if you watch the recovery live stream, you can see the astronauts are recovered into a raft along with the recovery crew, not in a raft all by themselves.

[00:29:52]Forget the shoes. I'm more interested in what happened to Reed Wiseman because it looks like Sam Worthington has taken his place. Then there's a few notable faults with the capsule itself. Firstly, the orange inflatable balls shouldn't be around the base of the capsule. Those aren't there to keep Orion afloat. Orion naturally floats given its large volume and its mostly empty space inside. Those balls are filled with helium and they inflate at the top of the capsule to help keep Orion upright in rough waters.

[00:30:23]The holes that this image depicts these inflatables coming out from are actually thruster nozzles which are used to rotate the spacecraft and allow them to steer during re-entry. and the top section of Orion where the inflatables and the parachutes come out of are underneath a protective cover that we see jettison during the descent and land near the capsule. But in this image, the shroud is still there. I covered another AI image claiming to be Orion in my previous video. This one where they questioned why the NASA logo didn't burn up, except the NASA logo here is in the wrong place. Orion's layout had the crew hatch around 90° to the right of the windows and the NASA logo around 90° to the left of the windows. Not here, which in reality should be another window.

[00:31:14]Now, I did also show this photo of Commander Reed Wiseman standing next to the capsule after it had been recovered and the NASA logo has been charred away.

[00:31:24]But I also found this photo during the recovery where you can see those faint remains of it. But I also then later saw this image which has been posted by Mr. Nobody making the same claim with the caption, quote, "Well, well, well, the color blue is immune to severe heat."

[00:31:42]End quote. Where to begin? Maybe the fact that the astronaut exiting is about to get very wet because there's no boat there. Maybe I should start with that, as we saw in the video of the recovery, they didn't have their helmets on when they exited the capsule. But I think I'll go with highlighting that this is yet more contradiction because this Orion capsule doesn't even match the other AI Orion capsule. The other image at least had the windows located below the silver cylinders, though that image only had three helium bags rather than the five that it should have. But then that's still three more than this image managed to render. But despite getting the window placement roughly correct, the hatch that's supposed to be to the right is missing. But this one has the hatch where the windows are meant to be with the NASA logo now being below a small window unlike above it in the other image. So there we are. Lots of AI images knocking around that claim to be from NASA. Some clearly just posting them for engagement, but some are trying to use them as evidence that Arteimus was fake. Though it makes you wonder why do they need the fake images to try and find discrepancies with in order to call the mission fake. I guess because they can't find any problems with the actual photos from NASA, but they can't bring themselves to accept that Artimus actually happened. But that's going to be it for this video. As always, feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments down below. If you've enjoyed this video and you haven't already done so, then please do consider hitting the like and subscribe buttons. And hopefully we'll see you in the next video.