Over a week ago, sanitation workers protesting garbage lifting clashed with police and administration teams in Hisar and Bahadurgarh. Amidst the clash a picture was being widely shared on social media platforms.
The picture featured a policeman kicking a female sanitation worker. It was claimed that the picture was real and from same protest.
During the investigation, Lighthouse Journalism found that the image was AI-generated and not real.
Fact checking this claim is important because, an AI-generated image falsely portraying police brutality during a real protest can fuel public outrage, distort facts and erode trust in genuine visual evidence.
Claim:
X user thought anarchy, shared the viral image with false claim.
Other users are also sharing the same picture with similar claim.
Investigation:
We started the investigation by running a reverse image search on the image. We did not see any credible news reports about the same.
After carefully looking at the image, we found out a few discrepancies in the same. The faces seen the image were sharp. All the people in the background watched in the same direction, which prompted to run it through AI detectors.
We then ran the image through OpenAI’s content verification tool, which confirms that the uploaded image was generated using OpenAI tools.
The result given by the tool was: This content was generated using OpenAI tools. The signals below provide supporting evidence for this result.
It further stated: We found a SynthID watermark that originated from OpenAI.
This confirmed that the image was generated using OpenAI tools.
Through a Google keyword search, we found a news report.
The report stated: Hisar Police have arrested two people in connection with the alleged circulation of a fake AI-generated image involving a police personnel and a woman sanitation worker on social media.
Conclusion: The viral image which claims to show, a policeman kicking a female sanitation worker during a clash with sanitation workers is AI-generated. The viral claim is false.
