Ever since the Shroud of Turin was discovered, there has been a lot of speculation about its origin. Many people considered it to be the face of Christ. When you have something that is as historically significant as the Shroud of Turin, you know there is going to be a lot of speculation surrounding it. Recently, this centuries-old shroud was handed over to artificial intelligence so that it could do some work on it as well.
When artificial intelligence (AI) is brought up in a conversation, you can be sure that there is going to be some controversy associated with it. You can ask it to do almost anything for you, but not everybody is happy with the results. Recently, however, they took the image of the Shroud and asked AI to give a clear picture of what they are seeing. Although there was some controversy surrounding it, some people thought that they were actually getting a closer look at what Jesus really looked like.
The AI that was used to create the image was MidJourney, and a picture of the Shroud was used and uploaded to the site. That shroud, or piece of linen, is thought to have been the burial garment of Jesus when he died in the year 33. The royal chapel of the Cathedral of San Giovanni Battista in Turin, Italy has been the home of the shroud ever since it started to be preserved in 1578. The cloth appears to bear a faint image on the front and back of a man, and many people speculate that it may have been Jesus.
On one part of the shroud, it appears as if there is an imprint of a face and it has been digitally processed so that the image is slightly clearer. When Mid journey was asked to generate a realistic image of what was seen from the faint image on the shroud, it got to work. In the image, you see a man with hair that is just below his shoulders and he also has a beard and mustache. It is similar to how many artists have depicted Jesus over the years. There also appear to be cuts on his face and body.
Some historians feel that the AI depiction of Jesus is inaccurate. The skin tone, for example, would have been darker according to some scholars. Then again, there is no indication of what type of prompt they used when asking AI to make the image, so it may have gone off of some of the artistic depictions of Jesus to get a starting point.