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Claim: A Facebook user, Itz Mc John Haruna, posted an image showing people standing and watching a fish that was claimed to be the world’s longest. The fish was said to have been found in a dam in Nigeria.
Verdict: False! A check by DUBAWA revealed that the image in the viral claim is false. The image was AI-generated.
Full Text
A viral post on Facebook showing an image of a group of people gathered around what is purported to be the “longest fish found in a Nigerian Dam” is raising questions. The post has generated 81k likes, 17.6k comments, and 12k shares.
Here are some of the reactions:
Daniel Ifezue said, ” The longest fish indeed because you’ve assembled all the fishes in the world and measured them one by one to come to that conclusion.”
Cornelius Mereweather-Thompson said, “I am surprised that the crowd doesn’t descend on the fish and start cutting it to pieces. Do you think Nigerians would stand idly by to watch a gigantic fish?”
While the claimant’s post mentioned a dam, the attached image shows a drainage system. This immediately raises questions: Is this fish the longest-known species, or is it an exaggeration or misidentification?
DUBAWA decided to examine the details of the image to determine the authenticity of the surrounding claims.
Verification
Upon analysing the image, several key discrepancies emerged. First, while the poster claims the fish was found in a Nigerian dam, the photo reveals a drainage area, not a dam, significantly altering the story’s context. The drainage appears partly dry, indicating that it is not a suitable habitat for such a large fish, further questioning the claim’s legitimacy.
DUBAWA then ran a Google Reverse Image Search of the picture and discovered that it had been shared on other social media platforms, as seen here, here, and here.
Additionally, we used a “magnifier” feature on Invid, a digital investigation tool, which revealed that the people standing around the fish in the image are not Nigerians, judging by the nature of their hair and skin colour. This raises further concerns about the authenticity of the scene.
We also used Content at Scale, an advanced AI image detector, which showed that the image in question is AI-generated, with a rating of 97% AI and 2% human.
DUBAWA further utilised another tool, Huggingface, which also gave a 98% AI and 2% human reading of the image, indicating that the image is unreal.
Conclusion
The claim that the world’s longest fish has been found in a Nigerian dam is false! DUBAWA’s investigations show that the characters and activities depicted in the viral Facebook image were AI-generated.
The researcher produced this fact-check per the DUBAWA 2024 Kwame KariKari Fellowship, in partnership with Nigeria Police Radio 99.1 Fm Abuja, to facilitate the ethos of “ truth” in journalism and enhance media literacy in the country.
