Image of a person dressed as Pikachu in Turkey protests is AI-generated

Thousands have taken to the streets in Turkey to protest Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu’s arrest. 

Social media users shared an image of one protester dressed as a character known for its bright yellow color and electrifying abilities: Pikachu.

"A Turkish person dressed up as Pikachu to resist police violence on the 8th day of the Turkish uprising," read a March 27 Threads post sharing the image.

(Screenshot from Threads)

This post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and Threads.)

There was authentic footage of a person dressed as Pikachu running away during the protests, but this image of Pikachu surrounded by police in Turkey is AI-generated. The technology news site 404 Media reported the authentic video was taken in Antalya, Turkey, by Ismail Koçeroğlu, a photojournalist at Akdeniz University.

GetReal Labs, a cybersecurity and digital forensics company, found that the image is inauthentic. In a statement, Chief Investigative Officer Emmanuelle Saliba said, "All three of our models trained to detect AI-generated images flagged the image as synthetic."

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Saliba also pointed out that a police van in the image had distorted text, if spelled correctly in Turkish, it should read "POLIS."

PolitiFact did not find anything to support the image’s authenticity — we found no photographer's credit nor was it published by any credible publication.

We rate this AI-generated image of a protester in Turkey dressed as Pikachu as False.