Fact Check: Viral group photo of men rescued from Uttarkashi tunnel is AI-generated

Hyderabad: An image claiming to feature the 41 workers posing for a group photo with the Indian flag after they were rescued from the collapsed section of the Silkyara tunnel in Uttarkashi, Uttarakhand, is being widely shared on social media.

Many Twitter users pointed out how some mainstream news agencies such as Hindustan Times published the photo, citing the source as PTI, without checking whether it is AI or not.

The 41 workers were rescued after being trapped in the tunnel for 17 days. Multiple teams were involved in their rescue, including the Indian Army. The prolonged rescue operation came to an end on November 28 when a team of 12 rat-hole miners and NDRF personnel rescued the workers between 7:45 pm to 9 pm. Uttarakhand chief minister Pushkar Singh Dhami said the health of all the workers is ‘fine’.

Fact Check

NewsMeter found that the photo of rescued men posing for a photo is AI-generated.

On closely analysing the viral image of the workers, we first found that the people in the image have imperfect features such as extra fingers, the eyes of the same person looking in different directions and some had their faces blurred.

We also found a watermark at the bottom right of the image which said Exclusive Minds. We found the X account of Exclusive Minds where the original image was uploaded – along with a series of similar images of men inside a tunnel – on November 28 with the disclaimer saying that the images are AI-generated.

Stating that the images are AI-generated, co-founder of Alt News, Mohammed Zubair tweeted, “Why are many sharing AI generated images of #Uttarakhandtunnelrescue operations?”

Lastly, we ran the image through the AI detection tool Hive Moderation and found that the image is 99.9 per cent AI-generated.