Lighthouse Journalism found an image being widely shared over social media platforms. The image claimed to be a group selfie of BRICS leaders.
Leaders of the BRICS nations met in New Delhi on Saturday for a summit focused on trade, investment and global conflicts, as the bloc seeks a bigger role in shaping the global agenda for emerging and developing countries.
A selfie, purportedly showing Russian President Vladimir Putin, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the President of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Chinese President Xi Jinping, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, and Iran’s Ebrahim Raisi, has gone viral on social media since then.
However, during the investigation we found that the image is AI-generated. The image is fake.
The image surfaced while the 18th BRICS Summit was being held in New Delhi, making it appear credible to social media users. However, the AI-generated image falsely depicts several world leaders together in a group selfie, potentially creating a misleading impression of their interactions at the summit. With realistic AI-generated visuals increasingly being used to fabricate events involving public figures, verifying such images is important to prevent visual misinformation from influencing public understanding of major geopolitical events.
Claim:
X user Muthukumar Subbaiah shared the image on his profile and wrote, “This is not just a picture. It is a warning to some.”
Other users are also sharing the same image with a similar claim.
Investigation:
We started the investigation by reading related news reports about the BRICS summit.
A report from The Indian Express confirmed that Iran was represented by President Masoud Pezeshkian. However the viral image portrayed former President of Iran Ebrahim Raisi in picture along with the leaders.
Also the article mentioned that Minister of Foreign Affairs Mauro Vieira represented Brazil and not President of Brazil, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
This hinted that the picture is AI-generated.
We then ran the image through an AI content dectector, HIVE Moderation. The tool gave the result that the image is 99.9 % likely to be AI-generated image.
We also ran the image through OpenAI verification tool; the tool suggested that it was made using OpenAI tools.
Conclusion: The viral image claiming to show BRICS leaders in a group selfie is AI-generated and fake. The image falsely also shows leaders who did not attend the BRICS meet. The viral claim is false.
