Image of boy carrying diamond, Al-generated “Fact-checking Content

By: Laymah Kollie

Photo of boy holding diamond. Source: Yekeh Kolubah page.

Claim: A Facebook user, Yekeh Kolubah, posted a picture on July 27, 2024, claiming that a boy in Nimba found a gemstone 395-carat diamond.

Verdict: Photo Al-generated! A verification using illuminarty shows the Al probability of the image to be 58.6%.

Full Text

On July 27, 2024, a Facebook page purported to belong to Representative Yekeh Kolubah of District#10 of Montserrado County posted an image of a boy carrying a diamond. According to the poster, the lad is a resident of Sanniquilie, the capital city of Nimba.

“A little boy from Sanniquilie, Nimba County, Republic of Liberia found a gemstone of 395 carat value at over 4 million,” the poster said.

When writing this report, 395 reactions, 97 comments, and 29 shares were generated on the posts.

In the comments, some users aligned with the poster, while others considered the information fake.

A comment said, “My seh too I na believe it yet. I’m waiting.”

Screenshot below

This controversy led DUBAWA to conduct a fact-check.

Verification

DUBAWA visually analysed the image and found that parts were suspicious. For instance, the little boy’s fingers appeared disfigured, which gave a clue that the image may have been AI-generated.

So, we used a tool, illuminarty, to determine whether artificial intelligence was used on the image. The search proved that the image is 58.6% Al-generated.

We further discovered that the image originated from OpenArt through Google Reverse Image Search. OpenArt is an online artificial intelligence tool that is used to create photos and other content.

The content on the image said, “Poor kid in Africa finding diamond and picking it up in his hands looking impressive and amazing.” It can be found here

Conclusion

From our findings, the image is AI-generated and didn’t come from Nimba as claimed.