This is definitely AI. And kinda old AI at that. The backgrounds are nondescript, the facial hair is ambiguous, the face looks like one of those “upload a photo to see it realistically move with the magic of AI”, the shirt looks airbrushed and ambiguous, he has dark eyes instead of very blue eyes like in real life, and if you try to look up pictures of any interviews of him in those particular years, he usually has facial hair and a button down, sometimes with a jacket.
Compare the upper right and lower left picture on this post with this similar meme. Film grain is missing (possibly due to AI “beauty filters”?) and how the upper right image, his eyes are way more blue. I think the original meme creator probably wanted to make it look like all 4 pictures were the same gray shirt rather than 4 different gray shirts since the bottom left shirt in the picture I posted is heathered gray instead of flat gray.
This is definitely AI. And kinda old AI at that. The backgrounds are nondescript, the facial hair is ambiguous, the face looks like one of those “upload a photo to see it realistically move with the magic of AI”, the shirt looks airbrushed and ambiguous, he has dark eyes instead of very blue eyes like in real life, and if you try to look up pictures of any interviews of him in those particular years, he usually has facial hair and a button down, sometimes with a jacket.
Compare the upper right and lower left picture on this post with this similar meme. Film grain is missing (possibly due to AI “beauty filters”?) and how the upper right image, his eyes are way more blue. I think the original meme creator probably wanted to make it look like all 4 pictures were the same gray shirt rather than 4 different gray shirts since the bottom left shirt in the picture I posted is heathered gray instead of flat gray.
I don’t think it’s pure ai I think it’s really shitty ai upscaling