Fact Check: Viral video showing a robot playing TT with a human being is digitally altered
A video is being shared virally on social media showing a robot playing table tennis and defeating its opponent. The video is shared with captions like ‘An intriguing future awaits us.
Claim :
The video shows a robot playing a table tennis match with a human beingFact :
The viral video is digitally altered. The original video has two people playing a table tennis match.
A video is being shared virally on social media showing a robot playing table tennis and defeating its opponent. The video is shared with captions like ‘An intriguing future awaits us. Humans 0, Robot 1: watch this unbeatable table tennis robot ace the competition
Other users shared the video with the caption: ‘A robot beating a human in a table tennis contest.’
Fact Check:
The claim is false. The video is digitally altered.
When we performed a reverse image search on Google using the images extracted from the video, we found several videos with similar images published on YouTube.
A short video was published by a channel named Jan Valenta – Table Tennis on March 24, 2023. The title of the video goes as “Absolutely INSANE Table Tennis Defense from Yang Wang!
#tabletennis #defence #
A similar short video has been shared by a YouTube channel named Table Tennis Daily on March 28, 2023.
When the viral video is observed carefully, we found that the robot's moves are the same as the player in the YouTube videos seen above. The commentary of these videos is the same as in the viral video.
The qualifier table tennis matches were played between the Czech Republic and Slovenia, from where the viral video was taken. Here is the highlight video.
When searched further, we could not find any reports about a match between a robot and a human conducted recently.
Hence, the viral video is not original. A video with original table tennis players has been digitally altered, replacing a player with a robot. The claim is false.
