Lighthouse Journalism found an image of the Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, being shared widely on social media platforms. In the image, he was seen seated with Zakir Naik, an Islamic preacher.
During the investigation, we found that the image was fake and was made using Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools.
Claim:
X user SanataniRiddhi shared the image on her profile.
Other users are also sharing the same image with a similar claim.
Investigation:
We ran a reverse image search on the picture and did not find it anywhere on trustworthy websites.
We then divided the picture into two parts and ran a reverse image search.
We found the original picture on the Facebook page of Arabian Daily, posted on 23 March 2023. Rahul Gandhi could not be seen in the pictures.
The caption said: In pictures: Dr Zakir Naik Interactions with His Eminence Sheikh Ahmad Al Khalili, Grand Mufti of the Sultanate of Oman, Dr Mohammed Al Maamari, Minister of Endowments and Religious Affairs, and Assistant Mufti Sheikh Kahlan Al Kharousi.
We also noticed a few discrepancies in the image. For example, Zakir Naik, in the image, had six fingers, which suggested that the image could be AI-generated.
We then ran it through an AI image detector, undetectable.ai, which gave the results that the image was likely created by AI.
Conclusion: Viral image of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi with Zakir Naik is fake. The image has been modified and edited using AI tools.
