Fact Check: Mohammed Siraj gets his own statues? No, images are AI-generated

Hyderabad: Images showing bronze-coloured statues of Indian cricketer Mohammed Siraj are going viral on social media amassing thousands of likes from netizens.

The viral collage shows two statues of a person holding a ball. The statues appear to be in a t-shirt with a logo resembling the BCCI logo. The image was shared on Facebook with the caption, “Mohammed siraj statue (sic)” (Archive)

Similar claims can be found here, here and here. (Archive1, Archive 2, Archive 3)

Fact Check

NewsMeter found that the claim is false. The images were created using Artificial Intelligence (AI).

We have searched using various keywords and did not find any trustworthy reports about a statue of Siraj being erected or statues made of the cricketer in the past.

A reverse image search did not yield any matches of the viral image with online search results. This hinted that the image may not be real.

Upon inspection, we found visual discrepancies in the images similar to those found in AI images. The objects in the background and the statue have inconsistencies in lighting and other visual aspects. We used tools to check if the viral pictures were created by AI.

Using Hive Moderation, we found the images are 99.9 per cent likely to contain AI-generated or deepfake content. Sight Engine has determined that the image is 99 per cent likely to be AI-generated.

AI-generated images and deepfakes of celebrities are increasingly circulating on social media, often fuelling false narratives and misinformation. NewsMeter has fact-checked claims involving Indian politicians and celebrities like Rahul Gandhi, Mukesh Ambani, Ishan Kishan, Kavya Maran and others

Therefore, NewsMeter concludes that the images showing statues of Mohammed Siraj were created using AI. They are not real.