Fact-check: AI-generated image falsely shows Pakistan captain bowing to Indian cricketer

A photo circulating on Indian social media claims to show Pakistan’s national women’s cricket team captain Fatima Sana kneeling and touching the feet of Indian player Smriti Mandhana during the India vs Pakistan match at the International Cricket Council (ICC) Women’s World Cup on October 5.

The image was created using publicly available Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools and is not real.

Claim

On October 6, a user on X, a platform formerly known as Twitter, shared an alleged image of Pakistan’s women’s cricket team captain bowing and touching the feet of Indian cricketer Smriti Mandhana during a match in Sri Lanka.

The accompanying image was captioned: “Pakistan captain Fatima Sana Touch Feet of Smriti Mandhana after her loss vs India in World Cup.”

Similar claims were also shared on Facebook here, here, and here.

Fact

No such incident took place at the cricket match and the image being circulated online has been created using AI tools.

Geo Fact Check used two digital media forensics tools to verify the picture. Both Attestiv and Hive Moderation found the image to be highly likely to have been generated with Artificial Intelligence. Attestiv gave it a Tamper Score of 98, while Hive Moderation ranked it 77.3% likely created by AI.

Geo Fact Check also reviewed the full match of October 5 as well as its commentary. There was no mention of any incident involving Fatima Sana touching Smriti Mandhana’s feet.

Verdict: The image showing Fatima Sana bowing to Smriti Mandhana is AI-generated and does not depict a real event.

Follow us on @GeoFactCheck on X (Twitter) and @geo_factcheck on Instagram. If our readers detect any errors, we encourage them to contact us at [email protected]