How to Detect AI-Generated Images in Your App (Node.js + API)

Last week a client asked me to flag AI-generated profile photos during user signup. Sounds straightforward until you realize there's no built-in browser API for "is this image fake?" and training your own classifier means months of work and a GPU budget. I ended up solving it with an HTTP call. Here's how. The problem is bigger than you think AI image generators have gotten absurdly good. Midjourney v6, DALL-E 3, Stable Diffusion XL — the outputs fool most humans. That creates real problems: Marketplaces where sellers use AI product photos that misrepresent items Dating apps flooded with generated profile pictures News platforms where AI images get passed off as photojournalism KYC flows where submitted ID photos might be synthetic Manual review doesn't scale. You need something automated. What detection actually looks for Before we write code, it helps to understand what AI image detectors analyze. There are roughly 12 signals that separate generated images from real ones: Frequency d