Artificial intelligence has presented a new portrait of how Jesus Christ might have looked through the Turin Shroud.

Using the artificial intelligence image generator called Midjourney, the UK-based Daily Express newspaper analyzed the markings on the Turin Shroud, one of the most controversial holy relics in the Christian world. The resulting images were touted on social media as the “true face of Jesus Christ,” though some users criticized the figure for being overly fair-skinned. According to experts, historical and anthropological evidence suggests that Jesus Christ was brown-eyed, dark-skinned, with short curly hair and a bearded Middle Eastern man. Dr. Meredith Warren from the University of Sheffield notes that the most realistic examples of Jesus’s possible appearance can be found in the mummy portraits in Egypt. Similarly, in 2015 forensic artist Richard Neave created a similar work based on skulls from the Jewish community of the time, revealing a broader-faced, dark-skinned, curly-haired image of a man.

WHAT IS THE TURIN SHROUD?

The Turin Shroud is a linen cloth believed to have wrapped the body of Jesus Christ after he was crucified. The cloth features the silhouette of a wounded, emaciated man with his hands joined over his chest. Some marks, like crown of thorns wounds, bruises on the back and shoulders, and crucifixion wounds, correspond with descriptions in the Bible. The true nature of this holy relic is still debated. While a carbon test in 1988 suggested the cloth dated back to the Middle Ages, a new scientific study published in 2022 argues that the shroud is approximately 2,000 years old. This has reignited the possibility that the shroud indeed once wrapped the body of Jesus Christ.