Lighthouse Journalism came across a picture being widely shared on social media platforms. Users claimed that the picture was of Sonia Gandhi holding a cigarette in her young days. During the investigation we found out that the image was edited using AI tools. Viral claim is false.
Claim:
X user Krishna Azad shared the picture on his profile.
Check the archive version of the post here.
Other users too are sharing the same picture.
Investigation:
We started our investigation by running a reverse image search on the image.
During reverse image search we found an image uploaded on tumblr. The picture was the same however, the woman in the image was different and didn’t look like Sonia Gandhi.
Upon checking the details, we found that the picture was clicked by photographer Farzad Sarfarazi in 2012. The picture was posted eleven years ago. The picture also had a copyright mentioned on the image.
We observed that Sonia Gandhi’s face in the picture was very smooth and hence we ran the viral image through an AI detector that suggested that the image was edited using AI tools. Some detectors also suggested the image to consist deepfake content.
Conclusion: Viral image showing Congress leader Sonia Gandhi holding a cigarette is fake. Viral claims are false.
