Fact Check: Viral video showing millions of people and claiming that they joined Manipur movement is AI generated

The Centre has extended the deadline for the three-member Commission of Inquiry, formed last year to investigate the series of violent incidents in Manipur, until November 20, according to a notification issued by the Union Home Ministry on September 13.

The commission, headed by Ajai Lamba, former Chief Justice of the Gauhati High Court, was established on June 3, 2023. Its other members include retired IAS officer Himanshu Shekhar Das and retired IPS officer Aloka Prabhakar. The panel's mandate is to investigate the causes and spread of the violence and riots, which targeted members of different communities that have occurred in Manipur since May 3, 2023.

Similarly, several women held a protest march against the Centre in Manipur as violence continues in the state even after 16 months. People also staged another protest against recent drone attacks in Manipur, reaching close to Raj Bhavan and the Chief Minister's bungalow in Imphal on the night of September 7. Thousands of people marched more than 3 km along Tiddim Road and moved towards the high-security zone before being stopped by the police.

A video has recently gone viral on social media, shared by several journalists and aired across various media outlets.

In between, a video has gone viral on social media. In the video, millions of people are gathered in the streets, holding banners with messages such as 'Manipur Wants Peace' and 'Rally for Peace.'"

Social media users have been circulating the video, claiming that the situation in Manipur is spiraling out of control.

Similarly, a YouTube channel named Bangladesh 2.0 has uploaded the same video on its channel. Which is titled “মণিপুর ভারতীয় দখলদারিত্বের বিরুদ্ধে প্রতিবাদ করছে আজকে।। লক্ষ লক্ষ মনিপুর বাসি আজ”।

In English it means “Today Manipur is protesting against Indian occupation, Millions of Manipur People Gather in a place” .

Fact Check:

We found the claim is False, Yes there is a Movement in Manipur but this viral video is not related to it. It was generated by AI.

Upon closer inspection, the video appears to have been filmed by a drone. In the footage, you can hear people chanting slogans, but surprisingly, not a single person is seen moving. Although hundreds of flags are being held, none of them are flying or swaying. It seems highly improbable that such a large crowd could gather and remain perfectly still like that.

To investigate further, we took some photos from the said viral video. After testing the photo in the AI tool, it was reported that 80% of the photo was created by AI. It has even been reported that it may have been built by Midjourney or SWF.

‘Midjourney’ is an AI art generator that creates images from text descriptions using artificial intelligence. An SWF file is an animation created with Adobe Flash, playable in Flash Player or a web browser with the Flash plug-in installed. It may contain text, graphics, or interactive content written in Action Script. Combining an ‘SWF’ file with AI-generated images could create a motion effect, giving the impression of a drone view in motion.

After testing the said photo in hive moderation tool, the report revealed that 99.8% of it could have been created by AI or deep fake. The report also revealed that 0.99% was generated by AI. 

On the other hand, we went to compare the audio in the video and explored it with the Image AI tool. The investigation has revealed that the audio is real, but the audio may have been used for the video reported by Resemble.

Hence we found the claim is False. While there is indeed a movement in Manipur, this viral video is not connected to it. The video was actually created using AI.