AI-generated cat-faced flowers shared as Himalayan monkey flower that blooms once in 20 years.
Claim
*The Himalayan monkey flower is said to bloom only once every 20 years. They were all bright little monkeys. The world is truly vast and full of wonders!*
Rating
Explanation
An image of three white-coloured flowers purported to be blooming in a mountain is shared with the claim that it is a Himalayan monkey flower and that it blooms once every 20 years. Some of the posts with such a claim can be seen here and here.
The Himalayan monkey flower is said to bloom only once every 20 years. They were all bright little monkeys. The world is truly vast and full of wonders! pic.twitter.com/k9sh88TbSY
— Tariq Izhar Khan (@TariqIzhar) July 11, 2023
What is the truth?
When watching the viral image closely, we found a watermark that translates as ‘Head Tea @叶子美图馆’. When searching for the untranslated word separately we found that it is ‘Yèzi měi tú guǎn’ in Chinese and ‘Leaf Beauty Gallery/Museum’ in English. We further searched with the Chinese word and it led us to a website ‘toutiao’ carrying images similar to the viral image.
When skimming through the page ‘toutiao’ we found that a profile with the name ‘Yezi Meitu Museum’ posted multiple images including the viral image. These images are titled “I heard that strange flowers have been found in the mountains again. Do you think it looks like a cat’s face?”, with the caption ‘AI painting appreciation, cat face flower’.
When clicking the profile name to find more details about the creator, we were redirected to another Chinese website ‘profile.zjurl’. The profile states that it shares AI paintings.
We also found multiple monkey-faced flowers that really exist in the names of ‘monkey-faced orchids’ and ‘Dracula simia’.
There were several instances where images created with Artificial Intelligence (AI) went viral thinking the images to be true. YouTurn fact-checked some of them and published articles on the same which can be read here.
Conclusion
It is found that an AI-generated image of cat-faced flowers is shared to falsely claim as ‘Himalayan monkey flowers that bloom once in 20 years’.
