By Anmol Alphonso
A video showing French footballer and Paris Saint-Germain F.C (PSG) star forward Kylian Mbappe astonished watching a humanoid robot scoring a goal during a practice session is digitally altered. BOOM found that there is no robot present in the original video and it has been digitally inserted into the clip.
The video is being shared as Mbappe's PSG are set to taken on the German club Borussia Dortmund on September 20, 2023, in their first UEFA Champions League 2023 game this year.
The short clip shows Mbappe passing the ball to the humanoid robot who takes a shot and beats the goalkeeper. The robot then hugs Mbappe who appears to be surprised.
The nine-second video is being shared with the caption on Facebook, "Moment France Forward Kylian Mbappé And AI Robot Battle In Technical Free-kick Challenge. I Must confess the robot free kick technique is absolutely awesome."
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The same video is also being shared on X (Formerly known as Twitter) with the misleading claim.
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FACT-CHECK
BOOM found that the viral video has been digitally altered by swapping a person scoring the goal with a humanoid robot. The original video shows Oussama Nacer, a YouTuber who creates football content videos, scoring the goal and hugging Kylian Mbappe.
Taking a hint from the replies to the video stating that it has been created using computer-generated imagery (CGI), we ran a keyword search with 'Mbappe, 'Robot' on Google and the search result showed the same video which was compared with the original video by a Tik Tok user last month stating that the robot has been digitally added.
We then found the original and longer video which was posted by the YouTube channel OussiFooty on May 26, 2022, in which YouTuber Oussama Nacer is seen scoring a goal during a practice session along with Mbappe and other PSG footballers including Neymar. There is no humanoid robot present in the original video.
Nacer posted 10.57 minutes video titled, "I LEFT MBAPPÉ SPEECHLESS! Football challenges vs Neymar, Donnarumma & Mbappé" with the caption, "Recently, I flew to Qatar to challenge today’s PSG superstars: Kylian Mbappé, Neymar JR, Gianluigi Donnarumma & Nuno Mendes! Besides challenging ALL these players, I had the amazing opportunity to wander around in the beautiful country of Qatar. I can’t wait for the 2022 World Cup to kick off in this amazing country!"
From the 5.40 timestamp, the same sequence of events can be seen in the original video as in the viral video. Nacer has been replaced with a humanoid robot in the viral video to make the false claim.
A comparison can be seen below:
