Claim: An image shows a child in the Shimshal village of Pakistan’s Gilgit-Baltistan region posing with a snow leopard she raised from when it was a kitten.
Fact: The image’s creator has said it was created using the generative artificial intelligence (AI) programme Midjourney. It has no basis in reality.
On 3 April 2024, Soch Fact Check received a WhatsApp message containing what appears to be a photograph showing a child posing with a snow leopard in a mountainous region. The text accompanying the image is as follows:
“No. This is not AI generated. This girl’s name is Gulmina, she lives in the Shamshal area of GB. This snow leopard was raised by her thinking it was a kitten. Now this leopard has grown up and lives in the mountains, but sometimes it comes to visit the girl. The leopard is fond of getting its pictures taken!”
Snow leopards are majestic creatures and “stealthy predators” that remain “solitary and elusive”, usually hunting “at dawn and dusk”, according to World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Pakistan. They are “rarely seen in the wild”, as per National Geographic.
The creatures are marked “Vulnerable” on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species as they are “facing extinction”. There are only “300 to 400” snow leopards left in the country, according to Haidar Raza, WWF Pakistan’s director for the North region, who is quoted in this report.
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check reverse-searched the image but found that it was shared by social media users with similar captions and by some websites that published reports on the same.
We spoke to Ibrahim Zauq, a cinematographer who has produced visual reports from Northern Pakistan, at Soch Videos — a sister company of Soch Fact Check — who observed that the picture was flawless when considering one of the two subjects: a rarely seen or photographed wild cat.
The photograph shows a “perfectly posed leopard, perfectly posed girl, [so] it’s questionable”, he said. “It’s questionable to get such a perfectly framed photo.”
Zauq added, “As for the size, this is probably not a fully grown leopard because [an adult one] is bigger compared to this kid’s size, so this is not fully grown. An adult leopard cannot be this small a size. As for AI, in the picture, as such, there’s no particular deformity, based on which one can say it’s [generated] by AI. The detail in its [the snow leopard’s] tail, which continues behind the rock, that isn’t something that the AI can generate so strongly [perfectly] … to put such a complicated thing, its tail, hidden behind a rock and that is then visible beyond the [said] rock.”
However, Sumaira Inayat, the co-founder of Gilgit-Baltistan Girls Football League (GBGFL), who hails from Shimshal, is of the opinion that the image was created using AI. In a comment to Soch Fact Check, Inayat said, “It’s an AI-generated image. We don’t have any Gulmina and such [a] friendly tiger.”
We then used Google Lens to check if a matching image had been posted across the Internet and found an Instagram post by @travelbeautifulpakistan, which captioned it as follows:
“📷 @babrakk / Shirin and her Companion created with midjourney”
Babrak Khan is an educator and, according to his LinkedIn profile, the founder of the Starfall Pictures animation studio, as well as an animation school called Luna Academy of Motion Pictures. His work primarily focuses on 3D animation and computer-generated imagery (CGI).
Soch Fact Check located the image on his Instagram profile here, where it is captioned, “Shirin & her fierce companion. Making a great duo👧🏻🐆”.
View this post on Instagram
In the comments, an Instagram user asked Khan, “How did you manage [to] take this,” to which he responded, “With Midjourney.”
In his Instagram story on 4 April, the artist put up a collage of the social media posts that shared his images with false and misleading captions, saying, “People are not sure if this is real-life or CGI. Thanks to @nvidia and its dope tech for delivering speed, good quality and precision in Art. #midjourney”.
Babrak Khan has made other similar images as well, with one showing a lynx alongside a boy holding a bow and another depicting a young girl with a white fox.
Virality
Soch Fact Check found that image went significantly viral on multiple platforms.
On X, formerly Twitter, the picture was shared here, here, here, here, here, and here. It was also posted on Instagram here, here, here, and here, while, on Facebook, it was uploaded here, here, and here. One user added a lengthier text in their post, passing it off as a complete news report.
Some websites also picked up the image, publishing articles here, here, here, here, here, and here. It was also posted by Iranian media outlets here, here, here, here, and here.
The visual was included in YouTube videos here, here, here, here, here, and here. On TikTok, it was shared here and also made its way to LinkedIn here and here.
Soch Fact Check conducted a CrowdTangle analysis for the past seven-day period from 29 March 2024 to 5 April using the search terms, “اس بچی کا نام گلمینہ ہے یہ گلگت بلتستان کے علاقے شمشال کی تحصیل مدن میں رہتی ہے”. We found over 250 posts across Facebook that garnered more than 22,000 interactions.
We also found that Dawn published an article titled “برفانی چیتے کے ساتھ بیٹھی بچی کی تصویر وائرل [Picture of a girl sitting with a snow leopard goes viral]” and posted it on its social media platforms. While the article itself dives into the origins of the viral image, the headline and social media posts may be misleading.
Conclusion: The image showing a child posing with a snow leopard was made using the generative artificial intelligence (AI) programme Midjourney, its creator has said. It has no basis in reality.
Background image in cover photo: FaiZan ALi
To appeal against our fact-check, please send an email to appeals@sochfactcheck.com
[…] Fact Check debunked a similar claim earlier, when AI-generated images of a Northern Pakistani girl posing with a snow leopard went […]