Fact Check: Pro table tennis player defeated by robot? No, this is just CGI at play
A viral video of a robot winning a table tennis match against a man turned out to be a normal match between two people and a bit of CGI.
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India Today Fact Check
This video was created using CGI. The original video was of a match between human players from the Czech Republic and Slovenia.
A video making the rounds on social media features a humanoid robot defeating a man in an intense table tennis match with great ease. Many could be heard rejoicing as the robot scored a point with an easy shot and walked away from the table.
Tweeting the video, one person wrote, “When AI outmaneuvers (sic) us! Gosh, as long as it doesn’t supersede us in ‘human’ intelligence.” Archived versions of such posts can be found here and here.
India Today found that the original video showed a table tennis match between two human players, one of whom was replaced with a robot using CGI.
Our Probe
A reverse search of keyframes from the video led us to a similar video of a Table Tennis match. As opposed to the viral clip in question, this video showed a man playing against another man in a red jersey instead of the robot.
The movements and gestures of the player in this video matched those of the robot in the viral video. The description of the video stated that it showed the defence skills of Yang Wang, a Slovak table tennis player of Chinese origin.
We then found a longer version of this match in which both players could be seen scoring against each other. The particular part shown in the viral clip can be seen around the one-minute mark.
This video was shared on the YouTube channel of The Czech Table Tennis Association, the national organisation for table tennis in the Czech Republic. The video’s description in Slovenian added that these were the highlights of a qualifying match held on March 22 between the Czech Republic and Slovenia for the European Men’s Team Championship.
We also noticed a TikTok watermark on the viral video for the account "animatronic3D". Using this, we found this TikTok account that shared the viral video on July 23. The bio of this account read: “Showing the world how AI+ Robots will change our world”. The account contained various similar videos of robots that appeared to be made using CGI.
Thus, it is more than clear that a video of a table tennis match between two men was digitally altered using CGI.
(Written by Sanjana Saxena)
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