Authors
Kushel HM is a mechanical engineer-turned-journalist, who loves all things football, tennis and films. He was with the news desk at the Hindustan Times, Mumbai, before joining Newschecker.
Pankaj Menon is a fact-checker based out of Delhi who enjoys ‘digital sleuthing’ and calling out misinformation. He has completed his MA in International Relations from Madras University and has worked with organisations like NDTV, Times Now and Deccan Chronicle online in the past.
Claim
Anant Ambani and Radhika Merchant wear clothes made of pure gold during their pre-wedding cruise party in Europe.
Fact
Newschecker noticed the difference in image quality, when comparing the face, neck and hands to the clothes, which indicates that it may have been edited. Also, when we ran a keyword search for “Anant Ambani Radhika Merchant gold clothes”, we did not come across any credible news reports or photographs of such an appearance.
We then ran the image past a couple of AI content detection tools, TrueMedia and Hive Moderator, both of which detected “substantial evidence of manipulation” and “99.99% likely to contain AI-generated or deepfake content”. We also came across an instance of this image being posted on Instagram on June 1, 2024, captioned, “Beauty of AI”.
A further search led us to this photo, featured in an India Today report, dated October 31, 2023, with the caption reading, “Radhika Merchant and Anant Ambani at the grand opening of Jio World Plaza.” A comparison of the two photos confirm that it is the same image that has been digitally manipulated.
Result: Altered Media
Source
India Today report, October 31, 2023
Hive Moderator
TrueMedia tool
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Authors
Kushel HM is a mechanical engineer-turned-journalist, who loves all things football, tennis and films. He was with the news desk at the Hindustan Times, Mumbai, before joining Newschecker.
Pankaj Menon is a fact-checker based out of Delhi who enjoys ‘digital sleuthing’ and calling out misinformation. He has completed his MA in International Relations from Madras University and has worked with organisations like NDTV, Times Now and Deccan Chronicle online in the past.
