Fake images of Elon Musk kissing 'robot wives' are sweeping social media

• Fake AI-generated images of Elon Musk kissing robot wives have been spreading on social media.
• The posts claim that one of Elon Musk's companies is launching the "robot wives" in September 2023.

AI-generated images of Elon Musk in passionate embraces with so-called "robot wives" have spread on social media, with some users claiming such technology is close to being rolled out.

The billionaire can be seen kissing and embracing female robots in various images posted by Daniel Marven, a Twitter user with almost one million followers. In the post, Marven wrote that Musk has announced his "future wife" who has been "designed with artificial intelligence." He then went on to clarify that the purpose of sharing these pictures is to flag the risks associated with AI.

Another post by user Baboon Forest Entertainment said that Musk's company is in the final stages of making "Robot Wives," a product that will be released in September 2023.

It continued: "The man made Robot Wife will use batteries that last in accordance with menstrual circle. Batteries will only be charged for full three days and operate for a month. Sex with a Robot Wife will require a Password, Pattern or Fingerprint to avoid tempering!!!"

Various posts about the robot wives have attracted thousands of likes with some calling them "sex robots."

The images, however, are AI-generated, and there is no suggestion that Musk, or anyone, is actually working on creating so-called "robot wives."

Fake images created by AI of celebrities and public figures have gone viral numerous times on social media in recent months, with one picture of Pope Francis in a stylish white Balenciaga puffer coat receiving hundreds of thousands of likes on Twitter.

Some are using a platform called Midjourney, which uses AI to generate images through textual descriptions.

Henry Ajder, an AI expert and presenter who is on the European advisory council for Meta's Reality Labs, described the key ways to identify AI images to Insider. Ajder said that on Midjourney, especially, "a lot of the images have a very stylized, almost smooth kind of shiny, plasticky appearance."

Full Fact, which fact-checked the false claims about Musk and robots, noted that many of the fake images of Musk with robot wives have many of the hallmarks of AI-generated pictures.

"If you look closely at some of the pictures used in the posts, some irregularities in hands and facial features quickly become apparent," it wrote.