A photo of a bare-bodied Algerian boxer Imane Khelif is viral on social media, in which Khelif is seen as having male physical features. Users have shared the image against a gender controversy that erupted during the 2024 Paris Olympics after Khelif defeated Italy’s Angela Carini within 46 seconds. Soon, Elon Musk and J K Rowling among others alleged that Khelif was a ‘biological male’ and not a female, thus raising concerns regarding Khelif’s eligibility in women’s sports.

A verified page on X (formerly Twitter), @wokeflix_, shared the viral image with the caption, ” ‘She’ won a gold medal at #ParisOlympics.”, mentioning Khelif’s pronouns within single quotes, implying that Khelif is not a woman. The post received over 323,800 views, 4,800 likes and 1,100 retweets. (Archive) 

‘She’ won a gold medal at #ParisOlympics pic.twitter.com/QE7soGNIq4

— Wokeflix (@wokeflix_) September 9, 2024

Another X user, @MumbaichaDon also shared the picture with the caption, “This is Aligerian Boxer Imane Khelif. Liber@ls want us to believe “HE” is a Woman who won Gold in Paris Olympics who thanked Allah for HIS victory over a Woman. Strange world we are living in.” The tweet received over 32,200 views. This readers should note that user disseminates misinformation on a regular basis. (Archive)

This is Aligerian Boxer Imane Khelif. Liber@ls want us to believe “HE” is a Woman who won Gold in Paris Olympics who thanked Allah for HIS victory over a Woman.

Strange world we are living in. pic.twitter.com/6ut1GMMMAp

— BhikuMhatre (@MumbaichaDon) September 9, 2024

Another user, @AllYouCanMeme, amplified the viral image with the caption, “This is your woman’s boxing Olympics gold medalist Imane Khelif . This is not A.I , this is real…” (Archive)

This is your woman’s boxing Olympics gold medalist Imane Khelif . This is not A.I , this is real… pic.twitter.com/chE079HrwT

— AllyoucanMeme (@AllYouCanMeme) September 10, 2024

Fact Check

A closer look at the viral image reveals certain discrepancies in the background such as the deformed hand of a man on the left, the distorted face of a man on the right and a hand emerging from the right side of the image which has a huge broken nail.

A reverse-image search on Google led us to a tweet from the X handle, MidJourney Prompts (@MidJourneyPorn). The handle shared the viral image with the hashtags, “#AIArtwork #AIart #MidjourneyAI #midjourneyprompt #FluxAI”. MidJourney is a generative artificial intelligence program and service that generates images from simple descriptions called ‘prompts’.

Imane Khelif (Gold Medalist) #midjourneyV6 #PromptShare #AIArtwork #AIart #midjourneyart #MidjourneyAI #midjourneyprompt #FluxAI

detailed… pic.twitter.com/MQUKYkA5xa

— MidJourney Prompts (@MidJourneyPorn) August 24, 2024

We also noticed that the bio of MidJourney’s X-account explicitly mentions that all images posted from the account are AI-generated. This shows that the viral image is AI-generated and thus is not real.

It is worth noting that according to a New Yorker article, newly accessible tools such as Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, and dall-e are able to render a photorealistic landscape, copy a celebrity’s face, remix an image in any artist’s style, and seamlessly replace image backgrounds, but are unable to compute favourable results when requested to draw hands.

Further, we uploaded the viral image on AI-detection websites such as ‘AI or not‘ and ‘Hugging Face’, where both websites confirmed that the viral image is AI-generated.

Hence, it can be concluded that the widely shared image of Olympic gold medallist in women’s boxing Imane Khelif, where the athlete appears to be having male physical features, is AI-generated.

Alt News has previously published several fact-check reports highlighting the misuse of AI-generated tools.

It is also pertinent to add that International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach defended boxer Imane Khelif competing at Paris 2024, saying there was “never any doubt” Khelif is a woman. The participation of Khelif proved controversial given they were disqualified from the 2023 World Championships.

Abira Das is an intern at Alt News.

The post AI image of Algerian boxer Imane Khelif with male physical features viral appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Abira Das.

This post was originally published on Radio Free.