Image of Atlético de Madrid Fans Waving Palestine Flag Is AI-Generated

A closer look at the image shows irregularities in the photographs of humans in the viral claim.

An image showing football club, Atlético de Madrid's fans holding up the Palestinian flag is being shared on social media with the claim that it was a real incident.

(Archives of similar claims can be found here, here and here.)

Is this true?: No, this image is created using Artificial Intelligence (AI) by a fan page called, @atletiuniverse.

How did we find out?: At first, we zoomed into the photo and found some irregularities, such as missing hands and fingers.

• Swipe right to see the irregularities.

• Further, we ran a Google reverse image search on the viral image and came across a post with the same image on X on @atletiuniverse's page.

• The image was uploaded on 18 October with the Palestinian flag in the caption.

• We ran the image on AI-detector websites such as Hugging Face detected the image as AI-generated with 92 percent and AI or not revealed that the image is "likely AI."

• Below are the results given by the websites.

• The official Z handle of Atlético de Madrid didn't have any such posts.

Did football fans show solidarity with Palestine?: Al Jazeera published a story on 13 October about fans of the Scottish football club, Celtic showing support for Palestine by waving their flag during a match against Kilmarnock in Glasgow.

• Following this, the club's board released a statement that distanced itself from the fans' demonstration, stating, “The club has always made clear that political messages and banners are not welcome at Celtic Park, or any match involving Celtic.”

• However, the fans' spirits have been undeterred by encouraging "all Celtic fans to wave Palestinian flags" during the club's UEFA Champions League game against Atletico Madrid on 25 October.

The Quint has reached out to X user @atletiuniverse for their input and the story will be updated when the response comes.

Conclusion: The viral image showing Atlético de Madrid fans waving the Palestinian flag was created using AI and is not a real incident.

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