By Srijanee Chakraborty
An image generated through artificial intelligence is circulating on social media, specially on the Threads platform, with false claims that it shows a visual of the solar eclipse from Toronto, Canada.
BOOM found that the viral image is actually artificially rendered by a digital content creator who had posted the image on April 1, 2024 as an April Fools prank, days before the total solar eclipse actually took place on April 8. We also ran the image through Itisaar.ai, a tool developed by the Image Analysis and Biometric Lab (IAB) at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Jodhpur, which confirmed that the image has been artificially created.
On the afternoon of April 8, people in parts of North America witnessed the rare phenomenon of a total solar eclipse. The US will not be in the path of totality of another solar eclipse till 2044. Users who witnessed the once in a lifetime phenomenon of the ‘diamond ring’ shared numerous photographs of the eclipse on various social media platforms.
On the Threads platform, a user shared the image of the sun fully covered during an eclipse behind the CN Tower in the Canadian city of Toronto. The user claimed it to be an image captured during the April 8 astronomical phenomenon.
The caption of the post reads, “«The eye of Sauron» The #SolarEclipse2024 from Toronto CA”
Click here to view post, click here for the archive.
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Fact Check
BOOM noticed comments under the viral Thread post which called the photograph fake. To verify, we ran a reverse image search on the photograph and found the same image posted by a verified Instagram account.
We saw the Toronto based digital creator Taylor Holm@tayrontoo had posted the image on April 1, 2024, way before the total solar eclipse actually took place on April 8. The digital creator captioned the picture as, “BREAKING: Solar Eclipse came earlier than anticipated, Read more …Happy April Fools y’all #aprilfools”. He has also attached the address of his content creation website and his email address.
See the original Instagram post here.
We also checked the comment section of the post, where the creator confirmed that the photograph has been artificially rendered when asked by another user.
We also ran the image through Itisaar.ai, a tool developed by the Image Analysis and Biometric Lab (IAB) at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Jodhpur, which confirmed that the image has been artificially created.
Furthermore, the total solar eclipse was only visible at places that came under the path of totality. Places outside the path of totality in North America could only see a partial eclipse. Toronto fell just outside the path of totality and experienced a partial solar eclipse at 3:19 pm when blocked over 90% of the sun.
Check out the path of totality of this year’s solar eclipse here.
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