00:04Welcome to The Cube, Euronews' fact-checking show.
00:07A series of social media posts alleges that the recent strike on a Ukrainian UNESCO World Heritage Site
00:14was carried out by Ukraine and not Russia.
00:17On the night of 14-15 June, the Kiev-Pachersk-Lavra, an orthodox monastic complex,
00:24was hit by a strike, which images show nearly destroyed the Dormitian Cathedral.
00:28Ukraine's security services said that a Russian GERAN-2 drone struck the site
00:33during the overnight mass missile and drone attack,
00:36whilst European leaders condemned the assault and blamed Moscow.
00:40But Russian authorities said the strike was Ukraine's fault
00:43and that the cathedral was damaged by a US-made Patriot missile.
00:47Numerous posts on X claim that the attack was staged by Kiev.
00:51For example, this post here claims to show images of photographers
00:55setting up a tripod on the roofs next to the site of the strike to capture its destruction.
01:00Other posts share similar, if not outright identical, wording,
01:04suggesting it's part of a coordinated campaign.
01:07The problem with these claims is, however, that the photos were AI-generated.
01:11We can see this by running both of them through OpenAI's detection tool,
01:15which checks images for embedded digital watermarks.
01:18Both of these images contained a Synth-ID watermark,
01:22indicating that they were generated using OpenAI's image generation tools.
01:27Additionally, the roof of the cathedral in the background of the image is the wrong colour.
01:32As you can see, the Dormitian Cathedral had a brown roof with golden spires behind it.
01:37The Ukrainian authorities shared images of drone debris after the strike,
01:41which they said indicated that Russia was responsible.
01:44They said that their evidence indicates the strike was carried out by a drone that was manufactured in Russia.
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