This viral optical illusion broke people's minds in 2024

We saw lots of optical illusions go viral on social media in 2024. We even saw optical illusions in space and AI optical illusions that look like different subjects at different sizes. But few illusions broke people's minds quite like this one.

The images above appear to show a white face and a black face. But a closer inspection shows there's no difference in colour. Both faces are grey, proving that not everything is black and white.

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The face optical illusion was created by the Japanese experimental psychologist and optical illusion creator Akiyoshi Kitaoka. The illusion has nothing to do with colour but luminance. The luminance of the surrounding shade affects our perception, and the shade of the smaller details reinforce the perception of light or dark relative to the background.

Some people still refuse to believe the faces are the same colour despite numerous demonstrations on platforms like TikTok, where people have made videos showing the images being tested with the eyedropper tool in Photoshop or painted over them to compare them. Meanwhile, the face has become a recurring resource for Akiyoshi, who continues to create more optical illusions using the same image.

The illusion demonstrates the power of luminance and how surrounding elements can trick our minds into seeing the subject of an image in different ways. For more mind-bending imagery, check out the coffer illusion and the cafe wall illusion.