Did AI Ignite The Chris Rock Eye-Pad Conspiracy Theory?

The tweet was published by @viralclipsss on Twitter, an account that claims a pad is visible beneath Rock’s eye when the altercation is viewed in “8K quality images.” At the time of writing, the tweet has received more than 19,000 “likes,” though many on social media have pointed out that images captured by professional photographers who attended the event (like the one above) don’t feature the same alleged cheek cushion. 

@Viralclipsss/Twitter

Though the claim is easily dismissed based on those professional photographs, one must wonder why the Twitter image seemingly shows a pad on Rock’s cheek. Though it’s impossible to say for sure, the tweet suggests someone upscaled a low-resolution screenshot of the incident to a higher “8K” resolution. This process is fairly simple thanks to apps like AI Enlarger and desktop software like Topaz Labs’ Gigapixel AI (though there’s no reason to assume either of those products were used to create this particular image).

Upscaling software and apps utilize machine learning to intelligently analyze an image, scale it up to a larger resolution, and then fill in the missing pixels using the AI’s best guess about what’s supposed to be there. This process is seemingly magical at times, making it possible, for example, to watch 1080p movies on a 4K or 8K television. The technology is not perfect, however, and depending on the quality of the source image, the resulting upscaled content may include odd artifacts or elements fabricated entirely by the software.

Assuming the first image featured in the viral tweet was put through an AI upscaler, its low resolution likely resulted in the software mistaking natural skin creases for hard edges, the end result of which is a cheek with a pad-like appearance. Gizmodo ran with this idea and tested it on their own, running the original low-resolution image through an upscaler that resulted in the same sort of cheek distortion.