Fact Check: AI-Generated Image Of Putin Suffering A Heart Attack Goes Viral

Images of Russian President, Vladimir Putin falling to the ground after suffering a heart attack have gone viral on the social media.

In the image he is seen falling over his hands and then finally collapsing. Those sharing the image wrote, "Putin suffers heart attack!"

"Putin fell down. During late-night meetings with exsoviet members he collapsed and was helped back to his feet by aids. #Putin #PresidentPutin #Trump2024." wrote another user. The source cited by these users is the Moscow Times

We have learnt that these images are not authentic.In fact thScreenshot 2023-05-16 at 8.26.22 AM.pngey are generated by artificial intelligence (AI). If one looks at the image, it is clear that they are generated on May 12 2023. When we went through the website of the newspaper, we found no such report in it.

A reverse image search led us to a Twitter user, Misha Petrov, who had shared the two images on March 22 2023. The user had written, "Putin fell during a meeting in the Kremlin.

In the thread he however clarified that the the pictures had been generated by artificial intelligence. He said that the images were generated using Midjourney, an AI art generator application.

Hence it becomes clear that news reports of Putin suffering a heart attack are fake. Had this happened, it would have surely been a headline in every publication. Earlier similar artificial intelligence images of Donald Trump too had gone viral.