Fact Check: AI-Generated Photo Of Egyptian Mummy Going Viral With False Claims

New Delhi (Vishvas News) A photo is circulating on social media showing several individuals seated beside a large skeleton. The post is being shared with claims that the skeleton seen in the image is a giant Pharaoh’s mummy unearthed by Howard Carter in 1920. However, an investigation by Vishvas News has revealed this post to be false. The image featured in the viral post is generated by artificial intelligence.

What’s Going Viral?

Facebook user ‘RA Yadav’ shared the viral photo on February 4 and wrote, “Mummies of giant pharaohs were found by Howard Carter in an Egyptian tomb excavation in the 1920s #ancient #pharaohs #history # rayadav #virals”

Investigation:

Upon examining the viral post, the Vishvas News team observed that the faces of the individuals depicted in the image were not visible clearly, and the person facing forward also had blurred eyes and hands. These anomalies led us to suspect that the image might have been artificially generated.

To confirm this, we utilised Hive Moderation, a tool that helps identify AI-generated images. The analysis yielded a 99.9% probability that the photo was AI-generated. Additionally, another photo verification tool, AI and Not, also showed similar results.

Seeking further confirmation, we consulted AI expert Dr Azhar Makwe. Dr Makwe said, “It is fake, because when you see the whole picture, you will see the beard and the face are correct. But when you zoom in, you can see that the beard and face are blurred and the shape is also distorted. It is often seen with AI created photos that they look correct on the surface, but if you look closely, But they have many shortcomings.”

Now it was clear that this picture was not real and was made by AI, but we wanted to know whether Howard Carter discovered a giant mummy in the 1920s. During the keyword search, we found that British archaeologist Howard Carter had discovered the ancient Egyptian tomb of Pharaoh Tutankhamun in 1922, inside which Tutankhamun’s mummy was found.

Further inquiry into the dimensions of Tutankhamun’s mummy unveiled its height and width to be 5 feet, 6 inches. After this, we searched about the length and breadth of all the mummies discovered so far, but we did not find any news of such a huge mummy being found anywhere.

The user RA Yadav, who shared the viral picture with a misleading claim, has described himself as a resident of Patna in his profile. He has more than 34,000 followers on Facebook.