Real or unreal: Lo and behold, AI is doing it at no cost! When fans ‘met’ Messi, without paying Rs 10L

HYDERABAD: From ploughed fields to airport tarmacs, from mud houses to stadium corridors, Lionel Messi seemed to be everywhere in India last week — at least on social media.

Images of the football icon dining cross-legged with a family in rural Telangana, sipping ‘allam chai' (ginger tea), strolling outside Uppal stadium, or posing with admirers dressed in festive finery flooded timelines. The three-day visit of the football legend to India did more than draw crowds; it triggered an extraordinary wave of artificial intelligence–generated imagery that blurred the line between the real and the imagined.


The frenzy had a simple trigger. Organisers of Messi's India tour said a meet-and-greet and a photograph with the footballer would cost Rs 10 lakh. For most fans, the price was prohibitive. AI, however, offered a free alternative. With carefully worded prompts, users generated remarkably realistic images showing themselves taking selfies or posing casually with Messi. One even went further, posting a picture of Messi seemingly holding the phone and taking the selfie himself!

For many scrolling past, the images looked convincing enough to pass off as real. Some users were quick to flag them as AI-generated, while others brushed off scepticism with a now-familiar refrain: "Haters say it is AI."

Several users openly shared the prompts they had fed into AI platforms, detailing how they recreated lighting, angles, and settings to make the images believable. Others stayed silent, allowing speculation to swirl around whether the pictures were genuine or cleverly concocted.

Amid this flood of AI-generated imagery, genuine photographs struggled to stand out. A handful of individuals did post authentic pictures with Messi from his India tour between Dec 13 and 15, which took him to Kolkata, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Delhi. TOI verified some of these images, and AI platforms confirmed their authenticity.

Yet the irony was stark: Many AI-generated images were so convincing that even AI tools hesitated to give a definitive verdict on whether they were real or fabricated.

One post neatly captured the mood. "Messi craze. Rs 10 lakh worth pic," a techie in Hyderabad wrote while sharing an image of herself posing with the footballer. When asked where it was taken, she replied: "It was a low-key appearance, I can't reveal that." Another user pointed out a tell-tale flaw: "You should have given a cleaner AI prompt so that Messi's jersey has three stars and not two, because ever since 2022, that jersey goes with three stars."

The quality of the prompts often determined the quality of deception. When questioned about several viral images, AI platforms explained why they appeared to be AI-generated or partially manipulated.

Real or unreal?
In some cases, even AI appeared unsure. One fan posted a picture showing himself with Messi and chief minister A Revanth Reddy inside the stadium, with policemen visible in the background. An AI platform described all elements as plausible but stopped short of confirming whether the image was real.

There were clearer cases too. One person claimed he had taken a selfie with Messi in Argentina three years ago, well before the India tour. An AI check dismissed it as fake. In Messi's India moment, reality and imagination collided — and AI made it harder than ever to tell them apart.