A photo showing Prime Minister Narendra Modi dressed up in an extravagant costume is going viral on social media as a real image.
(Archives of similar claims can be seen here and here.)
The image is not real: This image was made by a digital creator using using the Artificial Intelligence (AI) based tool, Midjourney.
The creator made several similar images of Indian politicians dressed up for Met Gala, a fashion event.
How did we find out the truth?: We performed a reverse image search on the picture and came across a tweet from 5 April.
The tweet stated that this photo of Modi is AI-generated.
It also carried a watermark with the text 'Sahid' on the image.
Taking a cue from this, we looked for the profile on Instagram and found a profile with the username 'sahixd'.
The bio of the profile mentioned that he was a "digital creator" who regularly posted AI-generated images.
We found a post with the caption, "Artificial intelligence envisions politicians attending the Met Gala.", shared on 3 April.
The post carried AI-generated images of several politicians including former Bihar Chief Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, United States President Joe Biden, Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau, and Modi.
The caption carried hashtags about the images being AI-generated image using Midjourney, an AI tool.
We also reached out to the creator of this image, Sahid, who confirmed to us that he made this image of Modi at the Met Gala event using AI-based tool, Midjourney.
Conclusion: This photo of Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the Met Gala event is AI-generated.
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