Lighthouse Journalism found an image being widely shared on social media platforms. It claimed to show the devastating impact of the flood in the Dharali village in Uttarakhand.
During the investigation, we found out that the viral image is AI-generated.
Claim:
X user Kavita Upadhyay shared the viral image on her profile.
Other users are also sharing the image with a similar claim.
Investigation:
During a reverse image search on this image, we found that the picture was also used by several news websites.
The image was sharp, which prompted that it could be an AI-generated image.
We then uploaded the image in the AI detector.
We ran the image through decopy.ai, and it suggested a 74.16% probability that the image was AI-generated.
We then uploaded it in HIVE Moderation. This detector predicted 99.9 per cent probability of the image being AI-generated.
Conclusion: The viral image claimed to show the impact of a catastrophic flood triggered by intense rainfall in Dharali village in Uttarakhand is AI-generated. The viral image is fake.
