While reporting on the aviation disaster in Dhaka in which a military jet crashed into a school building killing at least 31 people, some media outlets used photos of an aircraft engulfed in flames stranded in the middle of what appears to be a playground. Some others carried a photograph of the wreckage of a large aircraft near a partially damaged L-shaped building.
An F7 jet of Bangladesh Air Force crashed into the Milestone School and College, in Uttara, Dhaka minutes after taking off for a training exercise on July 21. Among the deceased, at least 17 were children.
Image I
This image, showing the wreckage of an aircraft in the middle of a playground with one end of it covered in a blaze was used, among others, by The Mirror, a British media outlet, in its report on the tragedy in Dhaka. The caption says, "A massive explosion saw flames and smoke pouring from the aircraft." Credit for the photo was given to X handle @MdNasir1123365. The photo also shows an ambulance, some emergency workers and some onlookers. The article was later updated and the image removed.
Daily Star, another United Kingdom-based media outlet, used the same image. Here, the caption read, "Monday's disaster saw multiple fatalities", and the credit for the image was given to the same X user, @MdNasir1123365.
Image II
This image is similar to the earlier one. It shows an aircraft up in flames in the middle of a field, with thick black smoke billowing into the sky. Some buildings can be seen in the background and emergency workers and onlookers are also present near the plane.
OpIndia Gujarat shared a news update about the crash from its X handle, where they used this image. (Archive)
Several other media outlets like Sylhet Times News (Bangladesh-based), Life News (China-based), and Biziday (Romania-based), used the same photograph. This image, too, had been shared by the X user, @MdNasir1123365.
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Image III
The third image shows a large plane in front of a partly damaged two-storeyed L-shaped building. The aircraft bears the number 417A, along with markings like BGI and the Bangladesh Air Force logo. The front of the aircraft appears to be intact.
Republic, Punjab Kesari, and State Times used this picture in their report covering the tragedy.
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Fact Check
There are several inconsistencies in all the three images mentioned above, which raise doubts about their authenticity.
To begin with, we noticed that the emergency vehicle seen in Image I above had some illegiblee words written on it (See below). This is one of the common anomalies found in AI-generated content. The unusual clarity of all the three images, too, raises questions about their authenticity. Also, the condition of the aircraft post-impact does not align with the severity of the accident.
In fact, none of the images matches the footage of the accident available in public domain. According to news reports, the fighter jet F7 rammed into a two-storeyed building of the Milestone School and College in Dhaka, 10 km from the air base from where the flight had taken off. However, the photographs mentioned above either show an aircraft in the middle of a field or stranded next to a building. Moreover, each of the three photos shows a different aircraft.
To find out more, we went through reports published by Reuters and BBC, which showed the remains of the aircraft and the building into which it had crashed. The aircraft, as seen in the Reuters photo below, had been damaged almost beyond recognition. These are in stark contrast to the images carried by the media outlets mentioned above.
Next, we noted that the Reuters report and other local reports had mentioned that the ill-fated military aircraft was a F7 BGI, bearing tail number 701. We checked photos of these Chinese-made jets and matched them with the viral images. It is clear from the comparisons below that none of the three photos carried by the media houses mentioned earlier in the story shows an F7 BGI. Hence, these are not actual photos of the accident.
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To corroborate our findings further, we contacted a fact-checker from Dhaka, Bangladesh, and a photojournalist who had covered the crash. The former, Shohanur Rahman, told Alt News that these pictures did not depict the real incident. The latter, AP photojournalist Mahmud Hossain Opu, confirmed the same. "The images appear to be AI-generated and not from the actual aircraft crash in Bangladesh," he told Alt News.
We also used a few AI image detection tools to check the authenticity of the photos, and all of them showed a high probability of the images being AI-generated.
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Therefore, we can conclude that multiple media outlets used AI-generated images and passed them off as actual photographs of the July 21 plane crash in Dhaka.
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