Media Organisations Passed Off AI Images as Imran Khan Sitting in Jail
We found that the images were generated using AI tool 'Midjourney' and are not real images as claimed.
Fact-Check | The pictures of former Prime Minister of Pakistan Imran Khan are AI-generated.
(Photo: Altered by The Quint)
Two pictures which show former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan sitting inside a room is being shared with a claim that they were taken after Khan's arrest in connection with the Al-Qadir Trust Case.
Who all shared it?: Media organisations such as Times Now Navbharat, Aaj Tak, and Zee News shared the images with a similar claim.
(Swipe right to view all the claims.)
An archive of the post can be seen here.
An archive of the post can be seen here.
An archive of the post can be seen here.
Are these claims true?: No, the images have been generated using an Artificial Intelligence (AI) tool called 'Midjourney'.
While Khan has been arrested, the visuals are not real making the viral claim misleading.
What led us to the truth?: At first, we noticed the text which said "exclusive by midjourney" in both pictures uploaded on the internet.
(Swipe right to view all the images.)
The watermark can be seen in the image uploaded by Times Now Navbharat.
This image also carried a watermark.
What is Midjourney?: It is an AI tool which creates realistic images within seconds based on text prompts given by the user.
Other noticeable discrepancies: A closer look at this picture of Khan shows him having more than 6 toes in his leg.
Khan's leg has some noticeable errors that are generally seen in AI images.
Using the magnifier tool of InVID, a Google Chrome extension, we zoomed in to the hands of Khan. This showed that his hands seem to merge into each other.
Khan's hands seem to merge into each other.
It should be noted that the images generated by AI tools are sophisticated but not perfect.
There are some common discrepancies which are usually seen, such as irregular number of fingers, incomplete structure of objects, body parts merging into each other, and more.
The Quint has previously debunked several deepfakes which went viral as real images and some of them can be read here and here.
Conclusion: These images of former Pakistani PM Imran Khan sitting inside a room are AI-generated and not real ones as claimed.
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