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A video has emerged on social media suggesting that a new species of fish with a human face has been discovered. The video has been widely shared across social media platforms especially TikTok and X (formerly Twitter).
In one of the viral videos Fact-Check Ghana has sighted, Piesie Multimedia, a radio station, shared the video of fishes with human faces during its programme titled ‘Work and Happiness’, which was streamed on Facebook on Saturday, February 2, 2024. A recording of the programme during when the viral video was shared was also published on Tiktok.
In his commentary, the host of the programme said the new species of fish with human faces have been discovered in a lake called Samsara in Africa in the Karanji Region. According to the host, some Whitemen noticed that the lake was secluded from all activities, so they decided to visit the lake and conduct some investigations.
Claim: “The white people have found a lake abroad which is a habitat for fishes that have human faces.”
Verdict: False.
Explanation:
When Fact-Check Ghana did a reverse search of the frames of the viral video, the team found out that the original video was posted on YouTube on January 18, 2024. The search also found that the video had also gone viral in other parts of the world.
Lake Samsara does not exist
In the TikTok post of Piesie Multimedia, the host of the show stated at the beginning of the video that Lake Samsara, the supposed lake that contains the fish species, was abroad. When Fact-Check Ghana conducted a web search of the lake, the team found no evidence of an existing lake called Samsara.
The team further searched for Karanji Region and found out that Karanji was rather a lake in the City of Mysore in the State of Karnataka, in India, and there has been no news report indicating that any such species of fish has been found there.
AI-generated video
When Fact-Check Ghana ran an image frame from the video through AI detector platforms, the results proved that the image was 99.8% AI-generated.
Fact-Check Ghana also found that an Indian Fact-Checking website, Factly has also verified the video and proven that it is AI-generated.
In their report, Factly also used Hive AI detector or Moderation to verify a frame from the video and the results showed that the image was 99.4% AI-generated.
In conclusion, there’s no evidence that some species of fish with human faces exist. Also, the viral video suggesting the existence of human-faced fishes is AI-generated.
