I do not think this is a real, natural set of photos.

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OP in r/pastandpresentphotos is an illustrator and graphic designer. He also has a YouTube channel. He posted this "before and after" of him and his wife and at first I thought it was cute. When I was actually looking at the transformation I got that familiar hint that what I was looking at wasn't quite right...

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I stated looking through the comments. OP was clearly using an LLM to respond to people (this post got a lot of engagement) and his response comments were just a little bit off. You know like how LLM are just a little corny and dont quite capture a normal, human response. One commenter asked "are you wearing the same denim jacket as the original photos?" and he says "yeah, we found it in a bin in the garage. It's what made us take these photos" 🥴🥴🥴

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I'm not denying OP has a wife, or that he's a real person, or that he even has a strip style photograph from 1994 that he used to help create this image. I'm saying the final product is AI. Especially the "older" versions of them. He responded to me with "I'm a graphic designer and illustrator, I hate AI" while he literally has a video on his profile of him using Adobe AI tools to regenerate something in a photo.

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The subjects of the photo make you feel weird or off looking at them. His comment responses are extremely LLM. He has evidence on his profile he uses AI photo editing tools. 

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I think this is AI, and it really makes me feel a certain type of way that over 17k ppl believed it was real and had their emotions exploited and that OP is just doubling down. I got downvoted for pointing it out. So yeah, we might be cooked :(

Over 17k people in another sub think this is a real set of photos. I think it's AI.