Picture of trees forming Narendra Modi's face is AI-generated

By: Vivek J
October 4 2023

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Screenshot of a social media post claiming to show a picture clicked by a French tourist in Karnataka's Gokarna (Source: X/Screenshot/Modified by Logically Facts)

What is the claim? 

A picture of a cluster of trees resembling Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s face has been shared on social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. The captions of some of these posts implied that this picture was taken by a French tourist in Gokarna, Karnataka. One such post on X (formerly Twitter) read, “Woah! Nature is also with Modiji (sic).” The user reshared the post with the caption, “This pic was clicked by a French tourist at Gokarna (Karnataka).” This was also shared by the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) official account in Panchkula, Haryana, with the claim that it was “clicked by a French tourist near Gokarna (Karnataka).” An archive of this post can be found here. There are other posts with similar claims, archives of which can be found here and here.

Screenshots of social media posts claiming to show a tree depicting PM Modi’s face. (Source: X/Facebook/Screenshots/Modified by Logically Facts)

However, this picture is AI-generated and not a real picture. 

What did we find? 

We conducted a reverse image search of this image and came across multiple news articles containing the same image, referring to it as AI-generated. 

One such article by the Hindustan Times, dated September 23, was titled, “Do you see PM Modi’s face in this AI-generated picture?” A section of this article read, “Artists are increasingly using different AI-powered tools to push the boundaries of creativity and create awe-inspiring images. Madhav Kohli is one such artist who often shares mesmerizing visuals on social media. One of his latest creations shows a picture of an island. However, what is interesting to see is how he blended technology with his artistic expression to create the pic in a way that it forms the outline of PM Narendra Modi’s face.”

Screenshots of the news articles containing the same image and referring to it as an AI image. (Source: Screenshot/Hindustan Times/LiveMint)

We contacted Kohli on Instagram, who told us he created the image "using an AI image generation software called Stable Diffusion." The application Stable Diffusion describes itself as “a latent text-to-image diffusion model capable of generating photo-realistic images given any text input.”

Screenshot of Madhav Kohli’s post and response to a user’s query. (Source: Screenshot/X/Madhav Kohli)

Kohli has shared other AI-generated images on his X account as well. 

Screenshots of other AI-generated images shared by Madhav Kohli. (Source: Screenshot/X/Madhav Kohli)

The verdict 

The image shared on social media claiming to show trees outlining Modi's face is AI-generated. This is not a real picture taken by a French tourist. Therefore, we have marked this claim as false.