Sweet Prank

i just generated an image in the style of a Monet painting using AI

please describe, in as much detail as possible, what makes this inferior to a real Monet painting pic.twitter.com/VDJovKOqlz

— 𒐪 (@SHL0MS) May 12, 2026

Have you heard the one about the guy who posted a real Monet on Ecch (Twitter) while stating that it was AI generated?

Going through the comments, it's remarkable how many people called it out as authentic before the proverbial paint was dry. 

A poster wrought some moderate havoc this week when they shared a cropped image of a real Monet painting while claiming it was an AI fake, unleashing a flood of ill-informed reactions and muddled discourse. So, you know, it was just another day online.

“I just generated an image in the style of a Monet painting using AI,” read the original post, published to X-formerly-Twitter yesterday by an anonymous conceptual artist who goes by the pseudonym “SHL0MS.”

“Please describe, in as much detail as possible,” he continued, “what makes this inferior to a real Monet painting.”

Commenters were quick to jump in to explain why, in their view, the alleged AI image was worse than the real work of the French impressionist master. According to one, the image was an “incoherent muddle of inconsistently saturated greens.” Another lamented that there was no “coherent composition,” while someone else shared that the painting seemed “busy, artificial, nature in turmoil, polluted.” Another commenter said that the allegedly AI-generated image seemed as if it was “trying too hard” to resemble Monet’s later paintings, which he created when he was close to blindness. Others shared that the image was “obvious” AI slop.

………

Unfortunately for these many opinion-havers, however, they were the ones who were duped. The Monet was actually real: it’s one of his iconic “Water Lilies” paintings, created around 1915 and currently hung in the Neue Pinakothek museum in Munich, Germany.

This the apotheosis of a good prank.

Clever, but not really cruel.