A series of pictures showing a bear wearing a hiking bag and taking selfies with tourists in Kashmir Valley have been circulating on social media platforms, particularly Facebook, for the past week. However, upon investigation by The Chenab Times, it has been found that these images are not real and have been generated by an artificial intelligence (AI) program called Midjourney.
The original source of these images was a Reddit thread posted by a user named “velocd” on March 31, 2023, in the subreddit r/midjourney. Midjourney is a generative AI program and service created and hosted by a San Francisco-based independent research lab, Midjourney, Inc. The program generates images from natural language descriptions, called “prompts,” similar to OpenAI’s DALL-E and Stable Diffusion.
Also this was revealed by some twitter users.
Fact-check table in consclusion
| Claim | Rating | Reality | Claimed by | Claimed on |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A bear wearing a hiking bag is on a trip to Kashmir Valley. | False | The bear in the pictures is not real; pictures were generated by an AI program called Midjourney. | Social media users | Facebook and Twitter |
| Tourists are taking selfies with the bear in Kashmir Valley. | False | The bear in the pictures is not real; pictures were generated by an AI program called Midjourney. | Social media users | Facebook and Twitter |
| The pictures of the bear with a hiking bag in Kashmir Valley are real. | False | The bear in the pictures is not real; pictures were generated by an AI program called Midjourney. | Social media users | Facebook and Twitter |
| The pictures were taken by tourists during their trip to Kashmir Valley. | False | The pictures were generated by an AI program called Midjourney. | Social media users | Facebook and Twitter |
Detailed fact-check
Claim: A bear wearing a hiking bag is on a trip to Kashmir Valley, and tourists are taking selfies with it.
Rating: False
Fact Check:
Social media users have been circulating a series of pictures showing a bear wearing a hiking bag and taking selfies with tourists in Kashmir Valley. However, upon investigation, The Chenab Times has been found that these images are not real and have been generated by an artificial intelligence (AI) program called Midjourney.
The original source of these images was a Reddit thread posted by a user named “velocd” on March 31, 2023, in the subreddit r/midjourney. The thread shared 16 images of tourists taking selfies with a bear wearing a hiking bag, all of which were generated by Midjourney’s AI.
The images have since gone viral on social media platforms, particularly Facebook, where users have been sharing them without verifying their authenticity. The spread of fake images can cause confusion and panic among people, leading to misinformation.
Some screenshots of the posts:
It is crucial to fact-check any news or images before sharing them on social media platforms to avoid spreading misinformation. In this case, the images of a bear wearing a hiking bag on a trip to Kashmir Valley are not genuine and have been generated by an AI program called Midjourney.
Therefore, the claim that a bear wearing a hiking bag is on a trip to Kashmir Valley, and tourists are taking selfies with it is false.
Anzer Ayoob is the Founder and Chief Editor to The Chenab Times