Viral image does not show damage to Rawalpindi cricket stadium by Indian drone

An image of a stadium in shambles was widely circulated on social media with claims that it shows Pakistan’s Rawalpindi cricket stadium after it was destroyed by an Indian drone.

Sharing the image, X user Nagendra Pandey (@nagendr_24) claimed, “Pakistan’s Rawalpindi Stadium was attacked by a drone and is covered in smoke.” (Archive)

Another X user, Amitabh Chaudhary (@MithilaWaala), also shared the picture and indicated that the Rawalpindi stadium was scorched. (Archive)

At the time of writing, the post had been viewed over 11 million times.

Instagram handle ‘asgardiwana_official‘ also shared the picture in two separate posts. (Archives 1, 2)

Fact Check

Alt News performed a keyword search to investigate the viral claim. This led us to a video report by the Times of India. According to this report, an Indian attack drone allegedly struck the Rawalpindi stadium a few hours before a cricket match on May 8, following which a part of the stadium was damaged. The report also shows broken glass windows from shops and food stalls.

We searched for more news reports but did not find any that shows the stadium in the same condition as in the viral image.

We then compared an actual photo of the Rawalpindi cricket stadium with the viral picture. Both images are clearly different. The Rawalpindi stadium (on the right) has only two tiers of audience stands, while the viral image shows three separate tiers. It is worth noting that the stadium ground in the viral picture looks much smaller than the image on the right. Further, there is also clear difference in the structure and design of both.

Upon taking a closer look at the viral picture, the nearby wall and the ground appear to be connected to each other. Apart from this, the trees and plants around appear green and fresh, which is strange since the drone resulted in so much damage to the stadium, the trees ought to have bene scorched or suffered some damage too. These were signs that hinted that the image was likely AI-generated.

Alt News then tested the image using some AI detection tools that confirmed the viral image was, in fact, generated using artificial intelligence. One tool called sightengine showed a 96% probability of the image being AI-generated.

Another tool named decopy.ai found that the image was 99.98% AI-generated.

To sum up, the viral image does not depict Pakistan’s Rawalpindi stadium destroyed any an Indian drone. Our findings indicate that it may have been created using artificial intelligence. In reality, the Rawalpindi stadium did suffer some damage, but the footage from there appears distinctly different from this. Thus, the claims are baseless.

The post Viral image does not show damage to Rawalpindi cricket stadium by Indian drone appeared first on Alt News.

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