“This is as real as your hair”: Netizens troll journalist Prabhu Chawla for sharing AI-generated video as real

New Delhi: Journalist Prabhu Chawla faced trolling on social media after sharing an AI-generated cricket video on X and appearing to present the extraordinary catch shown in the clip as a real cricketing moment.

Chawla posted the video with the caption: “Have you ever seen a catch like this in any #cricket match by any player including famous fielders? What perfect coordination between mind and the body,” asking his followers whether they had witnessed such fielding in a real match.

The video soon went viral, with several users initially reacting to the spectacular catch. However, fact-check subsequently established that the footage was AI-generated and was not taken from an official cricket match.

The clip shows a player wearing an India women's cricket kit making an extraordinary leap, flipping backwards in mid-air and taking a catch while completely inverted. Some social media users also identified the player as India captain Harmanpreet Kaur, though the fact-checks found no evidence of such a catch having occurred in an official women's cricket match.

Several visual clues exposed the video as artificial. The player's movements appear unnaturally smooth, while the scoreboard contains garbled text, including “INDIA 2 v INDIA” and “NEW Zz4”, rather than the information normally displayed during a professional cricket match.

Chawla's post attracted a large number of skeptical responses, with users questioning how the video could have been mistaken for genuine match footage.

One user responded with a pointed reference to Chawla himself: “This is as real as your hair.”

Another wrote: “This catch is as real as the scoreboard that reads ‘INDIA 2 v INDIA.’ AI slop. Not cricket.”

Others were equally direct, with comments including “Sir it's AI” and “Did you fall for this too?”

One user said the artificial nature of the video could have been identified simply by listening to the commentary, writing: “If you would have listen to commentary it would have been easy to understood it’s AI Generated.”

Another sarcastically asked: “I bet you believe those cat videos too.”

The post also drew criticism of Chawla's journalistic credibility, with one user commenting: “Ha ha ha ha.. no wonder we are so poor in journalism.”

While some early responses reportedly treated the spectacular catch as genuine and praised it as an impressive display of athleticism, skepticism grew as information about the video's AI-generated origin circulated.