French media exposes PTI misinformation amid violent protests

Widespread misinformation remained a constant after Pakistan was gripped with violent protests by Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) workers and supporters, triggered by the arrest of their leader Imran Khan.

Amid the protests and vandalism, which ensued for a couple of days, a photo and two videos began circulating on the internet showing state brutality in the country and bravery of the political protesters.

The photo, which is actually an Artificial Intelligence-generated image shows a woman standing before riot police. Meanwhile, in one video droves of people are seen confronting police, while in the other, a crowd is seen carrying coffins, which was extensively shared with claims of the coffins bearing bodies of PTI protesters who died during the nationwide demonstrations.

A French news channel France 24, however, noted some obvious giveaways about the image and videos not being real or from Pakistan.

In its probe to prove the origins of the image and videos, the media outlet's journalist Vedika Bahl — who hosts a news segment Truth or Fake — took a closer look at the misinformation being circulated by workers and supporters of the Khan-led party.

When explaining the image, the journalist shared that it was being circulated across Twitter as a symbol of resistance against the country's riot police, while one tweet mentioned: "This is real FEMINISM."

The reach of the image was also gauged through the fact that it was retweeted by PTI's official Twitter account and had garnered over 231,000 views on the application.

The journalist confirmed that the image was generated through AI and traced back its creator, a Twitter user named Abdullah Saad. She mentioned how AI always has trouble drawing hands, which also gave away how it wasn't a real image. She also pointed out that the riot police shown in the image was nothing like the real cops who were tackling protesters on the streets with their faces, helmets and uniforms looking unreal.

The creator of the image said he was inspired by one of the female protestors in the demonstrations last week who confronted the police and took off her scarf as a symbol of defiance.

Bahl went on to show two different videos which were being claimed to show PTI protesters' resistance across TikTok, Twitter and other social media platforms. However, one of the videos — claimed as PTI supporters marching towards the police — was actually of 1,000 Honduran migrants moving towards the US border seeking US president's attention at the issues of asylum seekers.

Meanwhile, the other video was from a recent shooting incident in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's Parachinar where seven people were gunned down in a government school's staffroom.