Muhammed Shami and Sania Mirza with a trophy; Is it a real image?

Mubashir VP March 12, 2025

Claim

Many deepfake images were shared online by users after India clinched ICC Champions Trophy 2025. An image of Indian pacer Muhammed Shami with ace tennis legend Sania Mirza with the a trophy was shared widely by many users.

On March 9, India won the title clash against New Zealand in the ICC Men’s World Cup final. The Indian team crowned the champion of the cricket after the wait of one decade when it won last time in 2013.

A digitally altered image shared on Facebook by Yunas Chopdar, showing Indian cricketer Mohammed Shami and tennis player Sania Mirza holding a trophy together in a cricket stadium. Shami is wearing the Indian cricket team’s blue jersey with a white blazer, while Mirza is dressed in a white embellished outfit. The background features stadium floodlights. The image appears to be AI-generated or manipulated, as indicated by the 'Grok' watermark in the lower right corner. The post has received multiple reactions and comments, likely discussing the authenticity of the image.

Link

The archived link can be found here.

Fact check

To authenticate the image, firstly, the DFRAC probe searched the official handles of both sports persons. It gave no positive result. The official handles of BCCI and ICC also didn’t provide the desired result.

Then the image was analyzed using the ‘HIVEMODERATION’ tool. The result showed that the image is likely to contain 97.4% AI-generated content.

The watermark of GrokAI is visible on the left bottom of the image. Grok is the generative AI bot from X, formerly Twitter.

A screenshot of an AI detection tool analyzing an image featuring Indian cricketer Mohammed Shami and tennis player Sania Mirza holding a trophy in a cricket stadium. The tool indicates that the input is 'likely to contain AI-generated or deepfake content' with a confidence score of 97.4%. The classification breakdown shows 'AI-generated' at 0.97, 'stablediffusion' at 0.94, and 'not AI-generated' at only 0.02. The image appears to be artificially created or manipulated, possibly using AI-based tools like Stable Diffusion or SDXL inpaint. The presence of a 'Grok' watermark in the lower right corner also suggests AI involvement.

Result

The viral image of Muhammed Shami with Sania Mirza with a trophy is AI generated and no such image is shared by any credible sources. Thus the image is fake.