On 22 April 2025, at the Baisaran meadow near Pahalgam in the Anantnag district of Jammu and Kashmir, terrorists opened fire on a group of tourists, killing at least 26 people. Lighthouse Journalism found two images widely shared on social media platforms that claimed to be from the attack.
During the investigation, we found these images to be AI-generated.
Claim:
X user Treni shared the images on the profile.
Other users are also sharing the same images.
Investigation:
We started the investigation by running a reverse image search on the images. These pictures were not carried by any media organisation or news agencies. The sharpness of the images prompted us to run these through AI image detectors.
HIVE Moderation results suggested that the images were AI-generated.
https://wasitai.com/, another AI detector, also concluded that the images were AI-generated.ย
Sight Engine also concluded that the image was AI-generated.ย
Conclusion: The images going viral, claiming to be from the site of a terror attack in Pahalgam in Kashmir, are generated using AI. The viral images are fake.
