Photo of PM Tarique shaking hands with Netanyahu is AI-generated
A photograph of Prime Minister Tarique Rahman shaking hands with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is being circulated on the social media platform Facebook. A fact-check by Dismislab has found that this is not a real photograph but it was created using Google’s AI.
Posting the photograph on Facebook, one user wrote, “Hypocrite Tarique does the politics of Islamic consciousness day and night, yet upon getting an opportunity at the United Nations, I strongly condemn the betrayal of the spirit of July by shaking hands with Netanyahu. What does it matter if Israel is not in the passport, if it is in the heart, that is what is real!”.
The photograph shows Bangladeshi Prime Minister Tarique Rahman and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shaking hands. Posting the same photograph, a page named “Faceless Democracy – Mukhhin Gonotontro” wrote, “Hazrat Khambapuri (a satirical political moniker in Bangladesh referencing electricity poles) is secretly continuing the bootlicking just fine.
While verifying the source of the photograph, Dismislab came across a picture of Prime Minister Tarique Rahman and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif shaking hands. In that photograph, Prime Minister Tarique Rahman can be seen wearing the exact same attire. This was a scene during his meeting with the Pakistani Prime Minister on September 24. However, since no photograph of the Prime Minister with Netanyahu was found from any reliable source, Dismislab investigated to verify whether the image was AI-generated.
When the image was tested using the AI detection tool Hive Moderation, it showed a 99.4 percent probability of being AI-generated. To verify this further, the image was also tested using Google’s AI detection tool, SynthID. SynthID indicated that parts of the image were generated or edited using Google’s AI models. The heatmap generated by SynthID also showed that Google’s watermark was detected in several parts of the image.
This means the scene showing Prime Minister Tarique Rahman shaking hands with Benjamin Netanyahu was generated using Google’s AI.
