By Hazel Gandhi
Several media outlets including News18 and The Indian Express fell for a CGI (computer generated imagery) video of Virat Kohli's statue at Times Square and reported it as a real incident.
BOOM found that the video has been created using CGI as part of an advertisement for Duroflex, a mattress company represented by Kohli.
Virat Kohli is part of the Indian Men's cricket team, led by captain Rohit Sharma, which has been competing at the ICC T20 World Cup being hosted in the US and West Indies. On June 27, India beat England by 68 runs to qualify for the finals taking place on June 29.
The viral video shows a golden statue of Virat Kohli at Times Square with ads of Duroflex all around him. The video was carried by The Indian Express (archive), Live Mint (archive), Hindustan Times (archive), Moneycontrol (archive), and India TV (archive).
While Live Mint and The Indian Express have updated their articles to specify that the video is CGI, others have merely curated reactions from the viral post where users have questioned whether the video is computer generated without clarifying that it is not real.
Hindi news outlets includingIndia TV, ABP Live, Navbharat Live and India News also carried the CGI video as real.
A user on Facebook shared the video with the caption, "Virat Kohli statue in Times square,New York."
Click here to view the post and here for an archive.
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FACT CHECK
BOOM found that the claims are false, the video has been created using CGI and a statue of Kohli does not exist at Times Square, New York.
Taking a cue from the Duroflex ads around Virat Kohli in the viral video, we ran a keyword search on Google using 'Virat Kohli Duroflex Times Square statue'. This led us to the same video shared on Duroflex's YouTube channel on June 23, 2024. We noticed the word 'CGI' mentioned in the video's title.
The same video was also shared on Duroflex's Instagram page with a disclaimer that the clip was a "CGI Video" and a hashtag that read #cgianimation.
Kohli is Duroflex's brand ambassador since May 15, 2023 and has featured on several of their posts and ad campaigns. See here and here.
We also ran a search for a live feed of Times Square on YouTube and did not find Kohli's statue in it.
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