AI-Generated Images of John Cena 'Congratulating' Hardik Pandya Viral as Real

These images have been created using artificial intelligence (AI).

Fact-Check: These images have been created using AI and are not real.

(Source: The Quint) 

Two images showing American actor and wrestler John Cena with Indian cricketer Hardik Pandya are being shared on social media platforms.

Those sharing have written that it shows Cena congratulating Pandya and Team India for their win against England in the fourth match of the T20I series against England in Pune, Maharashtra.

An archive of the post can be found here. 

(Source: Facebook)

This post gathered 60,000 likes at the time of writing this story. (Archives of similar claims can be found here and here.)

Is the claim true?: No, the claim is false as the images are generated using artificial intelligence (AI).

What we found: At first, we did not find any visual proof to verify whether Cena met Pandya in Pune.

• We then noticed various discrepancies in both the images. In the first image, the logo on Pandya's cap and Cena's t-shirt is illegible; Pandya's eyes seem blurry, and their hands are also disfigured.

• In the second image, the background is blurry while the person in the background's hand seems disjoined from their body.

Here are the discrepancies in the image. 

Here are the discrepancies in the image. 

• These discrepancies indicated that these images could be AI-generated.

• We then ran them through AI-detection websites such as Hive Moderation and Sightengine, which detected that the two were AI-generated.

• Hive Moderation noted that the the images were 98.1 percent AI-generated and Sightengine declared that it was AI-generated. Swipe to see the results.

Here are the results by Hive Moderation. 

Here are the results by Sightengine.

Conclusion: These images have been created using AI and are not real.

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