A photograph of former Narayanganj City Corporation Mayor Selina Hayat Ivy, who was recently released on bail, has been circulating on Facebook.
The image shows Ivy standing alone in front of the damaged Bangabandhu Memorial House on road no. 32 in Dhanmondi, Dhaka, wearing a red-and-green outfit with a shawl and making a victory sign with her fingers.
Posts sharing the image claim that Selina Hayat Ivy visited Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s historic residence after her release from prison.
Various Facebook pages, groups, and profiles supporting the Awami League, whose activities are now banned, have circulated the image.
First link, second link, third link, fourth link, fifth link
On 6 June, the Facebook page Bengali Journal, which has approximately 36,000 followers, shared a post accompanied by a report, “Former Mayor Ivy at Dhanmondi 32 the day after her release: Destroying no. 32 will not end the Awami League!”
Link: Here
The Facebook post also included a photo card bearing the headline: “Former Mayor Ivy at Dhanmondi 32 the day after her release.” The post received more than 5,500 reactions.
Following the July uprising in 2024, which ousted the Awami League from power, authorities arrested Selina Hayat Ivy, a senior Awami League leader in Narayanganj. During the tenure of the interim government, officials subsequently removed her from the office of mayor.
After spending approximately 13 months in custody, Selina Hayat Ivy secured bail and was released on 3 June. Upon her release from Kashimpur Central Women's Prison in Gazipur, she travelled to Narayanganj. However, no news outlet has reported that she visited Dhanmondi during this period.
When examining the image circulating on social media, a logo of Gemini, Google's AI platform, appears in the lower-right corner. Content created or edited using Gemini commonly carries such a watermark. This observation raised the possibility that artificial intelligence had generated the image.
Investigators then analysed the image using the AI-detection tool Hive Moderation. The tool identified the image as almost certainly AI-generated. They also examined the image using SynthID, Google's AI-content detection tool. That analysis likewise indicated that Google’s AI technology had likely created or edited the image.
When contacted regarding the matter, Selina Hayat Ivy told Prothom Alo's Narayanganj correspondent, Mozibul Haque, that “I did not go to Dhanmondi after my release from prison.”
What was the original photograph?
To identify the source of the image, investigators conducted a reverse image search. The search located a photograph published on 16 January 2022 in an article by Prothom Alo's English edition. The article featured the image after officials declared Selina Hayat Ivy the winner of the Narayanganj City Corporation election.
Link: Here
The same photograph also appeared in several other news outlets.
The photograph used by those media outlets shares the same pose, clothing, and facial features as the image circulating on social media. However, the original photograph contains no scene from Dhanmondi 32.
Someone used the older photograph and used artificial intelligence to create the new image.