Images of Russian president at Indian religious sites are AI-generated
- Published on December 18, 2025 at 05:21
- 2 min read
- By Akshita KUMARI, AFP India
After Russian President Vladimir Putin concluded a trip to India in December 2025, AI-generated images were shared in posts claiming they showed him at religious sites with the country's Prime Minister Narendra Modi and firebrand Hindu monk Yogi Adityanath. There were no official reports of Putin travelling to the sites, nor were they listed on an itinerary shared by India's Ministry of External Affairs.
"Wow! Modi even got Putin to visit the Ram temple," reads a Hindi-language Facebook post shared on December 7, 2025.
It includes an image appearing to show Putin at the Ram temple in Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh state. He is standing next to Modi and Adityanath, who is the state's chief minister.
Text overlaid on the image reads, "Hail Lord Ram".
Images purportedly showing Putin, Modi and Adityanath at the Ganges, near the ghats in the holy city of Varanasi, were also shared in similar Facebook and X posts on December 8 and 9.
The images circulated after Putin wrapped up a two-day trip to India -- his first since the start of the war in Ukraine -- dominated by energy, defence and trade talks (archived link).
New Delhi is facing heavy US pressure to stop buying oil from Russia, which Washington says helps finance Moscow's war in Ukraine.
Putin said he was ready to continue "uninterrupted shipments" of fuel to India, while Modi thanked the Russian leader for his "unwavering commitment".
But there have been no official reports of Putin visiting either the Ram temple in Ayodhya or the Ganges during his trip.
According to an itinerary released by India's Ministry of External Affairs and a rundown of events posted on the Russian president's website, Putin remained in New Delhi for the entirety of his state visit (archived here and here).
A reverse image search found the pictures were flagged on Google as "Made with Google AI", and led to a similar image of the group at the Ram temple bearing the watermark of Google's AI assistant Gemini.
An analysis using Hive's AI detection tool also indicates an approximately 99 percent likelihood the falsely shared images were created with the help of AI tools (archived link).
Moreover, the images also contain visual errors found in AI-generated content, such as inconsistent and distorted features in the background.
AFP has previously debunked other misinformation targeting Modi and Putin.
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