Fact Check: After PM Modi AI-generated image of Rahul Gandhi goes viral

Hyderabad: After Prime Minister Narendra Modi, now it is Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s turn to get his face repurposed by Artificial Intelligence. A Facebook post has gone viral that showed an image of trees at a seashore forming the face of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi in the air when the branches were viewed from a specific angle.

The caption to the post read, “This photograph was clicked by an Australian Tourist in Colva beach, South Goa & it’s a ‘message to entire Planet Earth by mother Nature’. (sic)” The image was shared by multiple users on X (formerly Twitter) too.

A similar viral image of Prime Minister Narendra Modi was confirmed by NewsMeter as being AI-generated. Click here to view the post.

Fact Check

NewsMeter found that the image too is AI-generated.

Through a reverse image search, we found the same image on a website called Rattibha with an archived screenshot of a tweet by an X user with the username Ductar Fakir. The tweet carried the same image and caption while labeling the image as satire.

The tweet read, “This pic is satirically posted with the purpose to tackle Modi’s fake AI-generated post which was spread on WhatsApp thinking it was real!! Ankhe kholo WhatsApp ke uncle log. (sic)”

We also found the same tweet by Ductar Fakir, going by the username @Chacha_huu, on the X platform. On carefully analysing the account, we found that it’s a parody account with more such content.

Moving forward, we also found a video tutorial to create AI images using Illusion Diffusion Space software just through keywords. It was uploaded on X by user @multimodalart. The creator had diffused a number of human faces into nature. The same has been done to the Rahul Gandhi’s image as well.

Hence, it is evident that the viral image of Rahul Gandhi popping out of nature is AI-generated.