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| - Fact Check: A robot isn't playing pickleball with humans in this video, it's CGI
India Today found that the original video featured a pickleball match between four human players in Florida.
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India Today Fact Check
The robot in the video is CGI. The original video was of a match between human players at a Major League Pickleball competition held in Daytona Beach, Florida.
In what appears to be a stunning breakthrough in the field of robotics, a video of a doubles pickleball match featuring a robot player has been widely shared on social media. "Norway Robot Playing Pickleball with Humans.” read the Instagram caption of one such post.
India Today’s investigation, however, found that the robot in the video was nothing more than CGI.
Our Probe
We reverse-searched the viral video's keyframes and found an Instagram post containing the same video shared by US-based tech journalist Kim Komando. According to the September 15 post, the video was “great animation work”, and the unaltered footage showed all human players: Andrea Koop, Maggie Brascia, Anna Leigh Waters, and Lea Jansen. The robot had been digitally inserted in place of Anna Leigh Waters.
Further searches led us to a 16-minute-long version of the match between the four players. This video was uploaded to the YouTube channel "House of Pickle" in March 2023. Near the three-minute mark in this video, we observed the segment used in the manipulated video.
Numerous other videos from the same match were also available on YouTube, offering additional context. A comparison between the original video's background and the manipulated one can be seen below.
According to a Forbes report, the video was from a Major League Pickleball competition held in Daytona Beach, Florida, in March. The Kitchen Pickleball, the largest online social media community dedicated to pickleball, shared a clip from this match on Instagram, dubbing it the "Most Viral Point in Pickleball History."
It is hence clear that the video in question was edited using CGI and does not actually show a robot engaging in the sport.
Incidentally, a similar video purportedly showing a robot defeating a human in table tennis went viral earlier this year. At the time, India Today's investigation found that it was a standard match between two humans that was embellished using CGI.
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