A photo (here, here, and here) has recently gone viral on social media, with a claim that it shows women soldiers of the Indian Army eating food on the road while on duty in Barmer, Rajasthan, in the 48° sun. We fact-check this claim through this article.
Claim: Photo of Indian women soldiers eating lunch in 48° temperature at the Pakistan border.
Fact: This is an AI-generated image, not a real photo of Indian soldiers eating food under the Sun. Hence, the claim made in the post is False.
First, we searched the internet using relevant keywords to see if there were any news reports about this photo, but we couldn’t find any.
Next, after taking a closer look at the viral photo, we realised there were many anomalies. Such anomalies are commonly noticeable in the images generated by artificial intelligence/AI (here, here).
Let’s see the anomalies in the viral photo now.
Firstly, the shadows of some soldiers/officers walking in the background of the seated women soldiers are completely missing in the image. The person sitting at the centre of all the women soldiers has more than half of her left hand submerged/ blended with the surface of the bowl she is holding. Usually, hands, feet, and fingers are not created properly in the images generated by AI.
Also, the Indian flag on the shoulder of the front-row soldier sitting on the left side of the image looks strange. It is noteworthy that apart from the three colours present in the Indian flag, it has many sections and colours. Finally, another soldier sitting in front of this soldier has three arms.
Additionally, we ran this image through the AI-image detection tools like ‘Hive’ and ‘True Media.’ They confirmed that these images were definitely generated using AI.
To sum up, an AI-generated image is being shared as a real photo of Indian women soldiers consuming food in scorching heat near the Pakistan border in Rajasthan.
