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Do These Images Show US Army Delta Forces Being Captured in Iran? No!

Multiple discrepancies and detection tools showed that the images were AI-generated.

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A set of images that show some soldiers walking with their hands tied behind their hand and kneeling down, while the Iranian flag could be seen in the background, is going viral on the internet as recent visuals from Iran.

What did the viral post say?: An X (formerly Twitter) premium subscriber shared the photos with a caption that loosely translated to, "Urgent: U.S. Army Delta forces in the custody of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard."

This post had gained around three million views on the platform. Archives of similar such claims could be accessed here, here, and here.

Are these images real?: NO. All these images were generated using the help of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools and do not show real visuals.

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Hints in the viral images: We noticed multiple discrepancies in the viral images, which indicated towards the possibility of the images being generated using AI.

  • The person holding the flag in the first photo could be seen having three hands. The hands of the soldiers kneeling on the ground were locked in an abnormal manner.

  • All three images also carried the logo of Google's Gemini tool.

  • Swipe right to view all images.

  • The image showed that the person carrying the flag had three hands.

    (Source: Viral image/Screenshot/Altered by The Quint)

What did Google's AI tool show?: On asking Gemini to deploy its detector named 'SynthID' and check the authenticity of the images, it conclusively showed that all of them were indeed edited or generated using the Google's AI tool.

(Swipe right to view all results.)

  • The tool showed that the image was indeed edited or generated using Google's AI.

    (Source: Gemini/Screenshot)

Other detector tools: Team WebQoof passed the three photos through another detection tool named 'Hive Moderation', which clearly showed that the images were "likely to contain AI-generated or deepfake content".

(Swipe right to view all screenshots.)

  • The tool showed over 99 percent probability of the image being an AI one.

    (Source: Hive Moderation/Screenshot)

Conclusion: It is evident that all these images were AI-generated and did not show real visuals from Iran.-

(Not convinced of a post or information you came across online and want it verified? Send us the details on WhatsApp at 9540511818 , or e-mail it to us at webqoof@thequint.com and we'll fact-check it for you. You can also read all our fact-checked stories here.)

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