Erroneous Grok And Gemini Answers Used To Discredit Real Protest Images

Social media users are sharing screenshots of Grok and Gemini replies that wrongly describe real photographs of police crackdown during the recent wave of protests in Delhi and other parts of the country as old and unrelated.

Users are sharing these replies to fact check real visuals.

A reverse image search led BOOM to original news reports from the recent protests that carried these photographs.

BOOM also tested the chatbots and found that the sources they cited did not support their claims of these visuals being old.

Mother-child image from Mumbai protest not from 2026?

The photo showing a woman being detained with a child was viral after the tribal student protest in Mumbai, where around 300 tribal students marched from Nashik for better basic facilities in tribal schools and hostels. They reached Mumbai on the night of October 4, 2026 and took shelter in Tilak Bhavan, the Congress office.

On October 7, police personnel forced them out of Tilak Bhavan and moved them to Kopri in Thane. The woman in the photograph was among several parents who had joined the students on their march and were detained.

Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Sanjay Raut shared the image on X, and users were quick to 'fact-check' him and discredit the photograph using a screenshot of a reply from Gemini which said that the photo was taken on September 25, 2024, during an anganwadi protest at Azad Maidan in Mumbai. It went a step further, attributing the image to Hindustan Times (HT) photojournalist Bhushan Koyande

Archive available here.

Gemini gets it wrong

A reverse image search traced the photograph to an article that credited it to HT photojournalist Raju Shinde, who shot it on October 7, 2026. Several other news reports also featured images of the same incident, taken from different angles.

When BOOM asked Gemini about the viral image, it claimed the photograph was from a December 2023 incident in Kerala, where an activist and a child were detained. The source it cited was an X post that provided no evidence to substantiate the claim.

NDTV Amplifies False Claim

In an erroneous fact check, NDTV claimed that the image was from the CEC protests. It used the visual and Gemini’s incorrect response to produce a now deleted fact check video report purportedly showing how fake narratives were being built around the protests demanding the rollback of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) and resignation of Gyanesh Kumar.

Grok thinks image of police choking man is from 2020

On October 11, an image went viral showing a police officer in New Delhi appearing to choke a Sikh man while pushing him into a bus for detention.

The viral image was shared by Saurav Das, Cockroach Janata Party leader, and within hours users replied with a response from Grok that claimed it is from October 2020.

According to Grok, it was taken during the BJP's 'March to Nabanna protest in Kolkata, and it showed one Balwinder Singh, a private security guard from Punjab, who was detained during the protest.

Archive available here.

Photo is from CEC protest, October 11, 2026
We ran a reverse image search and found that it was clicked by Saumya Khandelwal on October 11, 2026 for New York Times.

BOOM then asked Grok about the viral image and received the same incorrect response. Further, the sources cited were irrelevant to the viral photo.

Why responses from AI chatbots are problematic

Grok's training data is based on content from X, and its responses often reflect the narrative playing out on the platform instead of fact-based information. As a result, a fact check by Grok can reproduce misleading claims.

Using chatbots for fact-checking risks amplifying false narratives in times of breaking news. Tech policy researcher Prateek Waghre has previously told BOOM, chatbots cannot produce reliable facts, especially in emerging, real-time situations.