John used the understanding of words current at the time. In the Bible, an image is a pre-existing, known physical object.
Yeah, my point was that with the advances of tech ology, they are close to animating known objects now, and it’s not far fetched to think that something common today could be manipulated to look alive and be capable of “miracles “, the beast will deceive many, using trickery and deception to create the illusions of miracles, just like back in the days of Moses and Pharoah. Satan is the great deceiver, and always his “miracles” are far Inferior to God’s real miracles.