By Srijanee Chakraborty
A viral black and white photo purporting to Sonia Gandhi in her youth holding a cigarette, is fake and has been created using an artificial intelligence (AI) editing tool
In the image, the Congress leader can be seen holding a lit cigarette whilst leaning on a post.
BOOM found the original image from 2013 which does not feature Gandhi's face. We found that Gandhi's face has been swapped with that of the original model using an AI face swap tool.
A Facebook user who shared the viral image wrote, "Those who recognize will get 8500 khata khat taka tak."
(Original caption in Hindi: पहचानने वाले को 8500 मिलेंगे खटा खट टका टक)
See post here, click here for an archive.
An X user also posted the viral image with the same caption.
See post here, click here for an archive.
Fact Check
BOOM noticed a watermark that read "Remaker" at the bottom left corner of the viral image upon close observation.
With the help of Google search we found that Remaker is an editing tool which uses artifcial intelligence to perform various functions like face swap in images and videos, image generation and as such.
Upon this discovery, we arrived at the conclusion that the viral image has been probably altered using face swap and Sonia Gandhi's face has been inserted in place of the original. Hence, to trace the original photo, we ran a reverse image search using Google Lens.
Through this search we found a photograph uploaded in Tumblr on February 26, 2013.
The photgraph uploaded on Tumblr also has the watermark of the photographer that reads, "Farzad." According to the given description, the photograph was captured by Farzad Sarfarazi in 2012 and titled as Ghazale.
Except the face, the photgraph is identical to the viral image. A comparison of the two can be seen below.
In addition, the viral doctored photo depicts Gandhi's face having an almost unreal glossy texture, the kind normally observed in images generated using AI.
